And There Is This: Would You Pay $1200 For This Cover?

I've been watching this cover, wondering what there is about it generating such interest:



The full listing is here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121594914323

Bidding is up to $1200 with 20 hours to go. And I thought $460 for the C16 FDC was a lot!

Not surprising. A $2 Prexie on a cover rather than a tag. Two transport issues to boot. Censored. Nice destination. It has a lot of things going for it.

Very nice item! Non-philatelic use of a $2 Prexie to an international destination has to be fairly rare.

See, I don't collect anything but airmails and aviation topicals. Which why I was missing the significance of the $2 "Prexie." And which is why I love this forum, because there is so much knowledge here to glean from others.

Well, with 20 hours to go, I guess it still has room to go up even more before the "hammer" sounds.

blcjr: If you thought $460 was high on the FDC an $1200 is high on this, take a gander at this U.S. prexie on cover:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/22-Cent-Sol...914323&rt=nc

Battlestamps,

$4,050? My Scott Specialized 2014 shows a CV of $1,000 (in italics). Will Scott have to revise its valuation?

Scott might nudge their price up a bit, but the sale of one item driven up by only 2 bidders would not justify them to increase it to anywhere near $4050. It does show the continued growth of collector appreciation in mid-20th century stamps, particularly the unusual and solo postal history uses of the Prexies and the Liberty Series.

Battlestamps - someone dropping 4 grand on a cover without a certificate - I don't care if it was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

I am sure the bidders know exactly what they are bidding on, its rarity and use nuances. The knowledge of the bidders for their specialty area is very likely equal to that of any certificate. There are several wonderful Prexie postal history exhibits on the WSP circuit now.

Collecting Prexies on cover is very popular and has been for a long time. A solo 22 cent properly used for a specific rate is a very scarce usage.

And the cover that began the thread went to the
Dutch East Indies during WWll in addition to having the $2 on it. Scarce franking, scarce destination, it will probably go higher before it is done.

For those who like pricey-prexies, dig these record prices:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Solo-14-Cen...:WNA:US:3160

and

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Alcatraz-CA...047675.l2557

I love collecting PREXIES due to the rate complexity during the period of use, WWII & Post WWII. It is especially challenging to track down solo usage and Insured usages.

It is entirely the $2 Prexie. It was flown from New York to San Francisico by regular cross country air mail routes, then it was transferred to the regular transpacific airmail route out of San Francisco. The transpacific route would have been Foreign Air Mail route 14 which was started earlier that year on May 3, 1941. Transpacific air mail of that era is fairly common since it was flown on the Pan Am flying boats which had relatively huge capacities for mail and passengers. The "transpacific Service" marking is nice, but it is unofficial and is just s privately made rubber stamp that has no particular standing as anything that would have been applied by the post office or airline.

I would have thought so, too, but the auction is over, and it never went any higher.

Thanks to all who contributed to the thread. I appreciate your observations and insights.

Part of my thoughts about the scarcity of the destination was that the war would have destroyed a lot of covers to that particular location.