Any Patriotic Cover Experts Here?

I'm trying to identify the producer of the cachet on this cover:



The addressee, Michael Kosko, was a lesser known producer of patriotic cachets. But I do not think he produced this cachet, as such. He is not listed as having a "God Bless / America" cachet in Sherman's catalog. I think he might have used someone else's "God Bless America" cachet, and combined it with the "First Day of Issue" slogan to create a cover for the release of C25a. Either that, or he did do a "God Bless / America" cachet that was not cataloged by Sherman.

Actually, I'm not certain which is more likely. The Eagle and Shield/"God Bless America" image is not lined up squarely with "First Day of Issue." Maybe Kosko had some otherwise blank "First Day of Issue" envelopes and ran it through a printer a bit crooked in applying a cachet of his own.

I've never seen this cover before. I picked it up from a dealer at TEXPEX. I wish I had asked if he knew anything of its provenance.

I can't help much other than to confirm that Kosko did do a God Bless America cachet (currently for sale on ebay), although it is entirely different from the one you scanned.



If the cachet you scanned had been a Kosko creation, chances are the cachetmaker's name would appear on it, as it seems as though that was his typical style.

Keep searching--someone is bound to have seen it. The cachet is so generic it could have been used for any number of issues and for any number of years with or without the "First Day of Issue" imprint.

Most interesting, wt1. So Kosko had a "God Bless America" cachet that didn't make it into Sherman's catalog. Well, the ocean of patriotic covers is so vast that no catalog can ever contain them all. I agree that it is unlikely that Kosko did the cachet on my cover, and for the reason you mentioned--that his name appears on covers known to be his. But I think he used other's covers. I have another cover, addressed to him, that I don't think is his cachet on it. So I think he sometimes used other's covers as well as his own. This looks like a cover produced ad hoc for the first day issue of C25a. And that's okay by me. I've recently started searching for first day issues of C25a and C26 on "generic" patriotic covers not intended specifically for these issues. I have a few already. Minkus covers were popular for the first day issues of these stamps. I have a Poppenger cover used for the first day issue of C26, and a Crosby patriotic cover used for the first day issue of C25a. Things like that. So this one kind of fits that meme. Except that it has the "First Day of Issue" slogan under the Eagle and Shield, though one or the other was not original to the envelope.

For now, I'll described this as "serviced" by Kosko.