Some Photos Of Neat Family Postal Artifacts!

I want to share with you all my experience sifting through some old material my grandma gave me. It is so interesting to see postal history come to life with a family touch to the items. This has gotten me more in touch with the value of preserving these items. It's fun to see junk pieces of paper turn into well organized artifacts of history with just a little soaking.

So far I have found newspaper articles, a complete stamp booklet, family mail, a small stamp collection that someone in my family cobbled together, seals, interesting cinderellas. In all it has been a lot of fun looking through this and I want to ask other family members to send me their junk so I can see what I find! Here's a few photos:



The bagged material--years ago I soaked stamps off of some other things my grandparents gave me and this is the remainder.







Makeshift collecting probably from my dad or uncles.









A complete booklet I found of Scott 2117-21.



Nicely addressed cover.



Mail from German relatives to grandpa.



This one took my breath away. It's from long ago-- back when grandma and grandpa lived in Chicago before bringing the family business up to Wisconsin.



Sometimes I find high quality stamps or ones I haven't collected yet!



Interesting cinderellas. These are for ordering music. They have gum on the back for affixing to an order form.



The snipped on paper stamps, ready to be soaked.

Thanks for viewing!

Grandmas aren't as old as they use to be. When I was young, grandma meant 1890's. Now Grandma mean 1960's. Grandma 1890... airplane, automobile, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Radio, TV, Interstate Highway, Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, soil pipe - copper pipe and wood construction homes, etc..

Grandma 1960 probably doesn't even remember President Eisenhower, the Beatles, Richard Nixon, Vietnam War, B&W TV, Howdy Doodie, Mickey Mouse Club, landing on the Moon, American Football League, Bart Starr, etc....

But, nice gift....

Looks like a fun way to start a collection. Start soaking! I even get a kick out of the record club stamps.

What 'grandma' means:

My great aunt told me about the first time a car drove down their street in Brooklyn ... people were yelling 'car! car!'.

My father told me about his USAF students all diving for the windows to see their first jet pass overhead ... airmen were yelling 'jet! jet!'.

I've got a 60-second story about attending the night launch of a space shuttle ... and being struck dumb by the roar.

I like my kids' stories best.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hi Short1!

Looks like you're having lots of fun going learning about your new hobby and going through what you have! You've come to the right place for getting answers to your questions and feedback on what you want to do next. There are literally 100s if not 1000s of years of all kinds of philatelic experience here. And people are amazingly friendly about sharing it!

Take special note of the family history you find. I've found mine a goldmine of information for insights into my family's everyday lives as well as the special events. It can bring to life any genealogy you or someone else in your family does. Even if the covers do not contain letters. the names and addresses and sometimes the senders' names can give a nice starting place for another line of inquiry. A lot of us get a lot of enjoyment out of investigating of the personal histories of strangers on covers we have. Why not gather that on your own family, especially while some of the people involved are still living or in the memories of people you know?

Karen