Pigeongram

A friend in India offered me to buy a cover Pigeongram to the price of 100 Euros.
This cover is a commercial business, without philatelic value. What is your opinion?

The only question is what is it worth to you. But when I see "Leopex" I'm thinking this is not a valid letter but one created for sale.....what we would call a "philatelic cover" in stamp collecting. So - it's a nice souvenir.

There are at least three listings on ebay right now, and at least two of those have more than one to sell. All are fixed price, from $175 to $300.

If you check completed listings, you see that one sold for a Buy It Now of $20 last month.

According to the listings, there are supposedly 250 of these made up. Yours purports to be #1, which might or might not be worth a premium to a future buyer.

I have no idea what it is worth...I just share this as background information. (I also noted that all three current listings are out of Singapore; the sold listing was a seller in India.)

too expensive honestly and I've seen these things sell for $10.00- $15.00 and high priced ones relisted repeatedly for years with no takers. Just my thoughts on the matter.

I agree - this is not a commercial cover, it is purely a philatelic creation. Also, there is absolutely no reason for commercial mail to be flown by a pigeon. The only kind of mail that I know of that was carried by pigeons that was not a philatelic creation is some military messages from the first world war and those are not actually letters but tiny strips of paper that were put into very small aluminum cylinders that were attached to a pigeon's leg. Also the price of 100 Euros seems to be completely unrealistic. Philatelically created pigeon mail should sell for between 5 and 15 Euros at the most, and I am sure there are very few collectors who would be at all interested.

One other thought about the cover pictured is that I do not see how this one could have been carried by a pigeon. It looks like it is a full size cover. Think about how small a pigeon actually is and anything that one can carry would have to be folded up into a very tiny container that can be attached to a leg.

Pigeongram (with container) from German 1910 / 1916
German Maneuvers.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54870322

French Translation
By Le Parisien with AFP
November 8, 2020 at 10:58 p.m.
During a walk in a field of Ingersheim (Haut-Rhin), in September, a couple made an extremely rare discovery: a 110-year-old military message, hidden in "a small aluminum capsule", no doubt. lost by a carrier pigeon.

On the advice of relatives, walkers handed the object to the Linge d'Orbey Memorial, located not far from the place of the find, as its curator Dominique Jardy explained this Sunday. This museum is dedicated to the battle between the French and the Germans in 1915 on the Alsatian side of the Vosges mountains.

The message, handwritten very well preserved, is written in German on a "kind of tracing paper", in a writing close to Gothic and difficult to understand, added the curator, confirming information from the regional daily, Latest News from Alsace ( DNA).

The text evokes German maneuvers
"When the permanent (from the museum) called me, I said: P…! A find like that is extremely rare, "enthuses Dominique Jardy, admitting that" in forty years "he has" never seen that ". According to him, the capsule probably rose to the surface of the ground over time, as is sometimes the case with grenades or shells from the two world wars.

The curator called on "a German friend" to decipher the message: it was sent by an officer of a Prussian infantry regiment, then stationed north of Ingersheim, to a superior of the same regiment. The text evokes German maneuvers between Bischwihr and Ingersheim, at a time when Alsace was German.

In total, four copies of the message were to be conveyed by four pigeons, one of which obviously very quickly lost after taking off the one found in 2020, estimates the curator.

July 16, 1910 or 1916?
A slight uncertainty remains on their date of dispatch, in particular the year, the last figure being less readable: July 16, 1910 or 1916? 1910, decides Mr. Jardy, who considers "impossible that it is 1916", even if verifications will be carried out.

As for the message, it will undoubtedly be exhibited at the Musée du Linge, but under certain conditions (anti-reflective glass, airtight environment, etc.) so that it does not deteriorate. Its place is very found: near a mannequin camping an officer of the same regiment as the one who wrote it 110 years ago.

More Pigeon Post than you could imagine:
https://siegelauctions.com/sales.php?sale_no=854

Oh? My imagination is limitless.........

Some WWI-related racing pigeons. From Racing Pigeons, Ogden, 1931.