Couple Of Questions About This Rtw Zep Cover

This one saw me comin' all the way. The $2.00, $1.00 and .50 center all lined up side by side, look great together. Slap a nice bright 10 cent Postage Due on it...that's a must have.

My problem, besides a poor mans addiction, is a couple of things with this cover. The postmarks on the $1 and .50 do not tie the stamps to the cover. Does anyone recognize these cancels? Do you believe they are legit?

The other is, can we believe this cover actually made the RTW complete trip? Should there be more postmarks or cachets applied?
As always, thanks for any input.
And yes, I love that it reads Zeepelin!

I cannot answer your questions about the cancellations, but it has the right backstamp for a RTW cover for this flight. According to my American Air Mail Catalog the postage for a full RTW cover was $3.52, so I would think the three stamps are original franking. I have a recollection that the catalog may be wrong (I'm using the 3rd edition) or else the postage due would have been 2 cents, not 10 cents.

It looks good to me, though hopefully you'll get better informed opinions than mine. That it is a "Carla Rose" cover is a plus, too.

Edit: extra postage may have been required to forward it to Washington D.C.

The rate for letters was #3.52 to go from Lakehurst, New Jersey to Lakehurst, New Jersey. Your cover appears to have an incorrect postage due amount - it should have been 2 cents. Perhaps the post office employee did no know the correct rate.

You cover has the correct Lakehurst cancellation on the front and receiving backstamp on the back. These were thrown in a mail bag in Lakehurst that was then put in the Zeppelin and they were not taken back out until the Zeppelin arrived back in Lakehurst. There was no special effort to give backstamps along the way like you see on some other around the world flight record setting flight covers. I am not sure about those black rectangles killing the $1 and 50 cent stamps - perhaps they are from New York City since that is where all of the Lakehurst mail was centrally gathered for processing before being sent down to Lakehurst, New Jersey to be put on the Zeppelin there? I think it could have been a nicer cover had those been cancelled with the Lakehurst duplex instead, or at least a New York City cancel.

This is a relatively common Zeppelin flight cover. There were 12,000 of them flown. The ones that most collectors are seeking on this flight are the ones that were sent from Lakehurst to Tokyo or to Los Angeles, or the ones that were sent from any place other than Lakehurst or Friedrichshavfen , or the ones from Lakehurst but that have the round flight cachet in black and not in the common magenta, or especially any that were posted on board and have the special on board cancellation.

Looking at the rate listings in the AAMS 5th ed, vol 1, page 274 versus Wawrukiewicz & Beecher's International rate book shows several differences. For example the card rate Lakehurst-Germany is .35 or .53 in the two books respectively. I believe the AAMS book has typos.

W&B list the rate for round-the-world letter as 3.55, thus the cover above is 5 cents underpaid, charged double the deficiency, thus 10 cents due. (Although according to the 1924 Postal Laws & Regs, the double-due penalty should apply only to fully unpaid mail, not short-paid mail, so still perhaps a misinterpretation of the rules.)

But what about the Wash D.C. postmark? Isn't that where the postage due was collected? Was there no additional postage required to post it from NY to DC?

There being no return address, the due amount was collected from the recipient in DC.
No additional postage to get from Lakehurst to the destination.

Who was "Carla Rose"? I read that she apparently produced some cacheted covers in her day, but since the cover in question contains no such cachet, is it just the name that makes it more collectible?

Carla Rose is considered on of the first female cachet producers. What is considered her "First Cachet" is a rather simple design for #703:


Actually, all of the "cachets" I've seen are simple like this, e.g.,



I got this from Mccusker, who described it as having an "in the period cachet:"



I would never have thought to describe these "corner card style text markings" (not sure how else to describe them) as cachets. But I do think the markings in the upper left of OP's Zepp cover are in her style, and this is an early example of one of her philatelic covers. It wouldn't add a lot of value, probably, but if this is a common cover (per Kimo's post) then it adds something to know it was prepared by a relatively well known early female philatelist.

Basil

Thanks.

The first ebay listed cover (1932 Olympics) got me intrigued because the address was Carla Rose c/o "Rose's Royal Midgets".

Although politically incorrect today and probably insulting to some people, it seems that Rose's Royal Midgets (later Rose's Parisian Midget Follies) was a relatively popular vaudeville troupe started in 1922 by Ike S. Rose (Carla Rose's husband). When Ike died in 1934, Carla Rose " inherited" the show and apparently continued with it for some time: