Beautiful Latvia Registered Cover......almost.

I Just picked this up at Milcopex today. It's a Registered cover from Latvia to France with 3xSc B66, 3xSc B67, 3xSc B68, 3xSc B69, and 2xSc 139 scattered on the front and back. It's a pretty cover though a little worn and even the back is pretty.....until you notice the 1 1/2 inches missing from either end of the back flap(they carefully left the center stamps intact). I'm guessing someone trimmed some stamps off to add to a collection. But it sure messes up an otherwise nice piece of postal history. Plus I'd love to know what other stamps were on the cover.

Just a gut feeling, but it seems like there must be another explanation for that section being sliced away.

One of those questions with no answer. Though it's kind of interesting that there are 3 of each of the 4 cheaper stamps in the set Sc. B66-71. The two missing ones in the set have a CV of $47.50 each and are quite a bit rarer than the others. If there were 3 of each of those on the cover that would be around $285 CV. But who knows what really happened.

Dare one suggest that the back was trimmed to remove the areas that had no stamps?

Perhaps there was extraneous writing? Torn paper where the item was opened? Coffee grounds?

Imagining that the back was trimmed to remove stamps seems a little stamp-o-centric ...

... and that the stamps not found on the cover are the ones most usually not found on cover is, perhaps, to be expected?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Is there any indication that the letter was delivered? Could censorship be involved?

[Hahaha, please try to ignore my nickname during this line of questioning!]

No reason why a Latvia-France 1930 letter should be censored. The back refers to a "service de nouveautes", so perhaps the envelope contained more, unused stamps.

I actually picked up 3 more covers sent to the same address from Latvia. So I don't know if this was dealer to client, or just someone who liked to use more than the regular stamps out there at the time.

What an interesting set of covers.

I couldn't imagine what "CH. BONG" signified in the first cover, but now I see it is the sender's name and it seems that he was sending new (?) issues to France. I haven't looked up the stamps yet, but you know, of course, if they were newly issued for their time. All in all, this seems a good way of sending stamps off to a person who wants postally used stamps.

Incidentally, the name "Pasquai" is probably misspelled. There is a relatively well known family "Pasquay" from Wasselonne and the recipient may very well have been the grandson of one of the Brothers Pasquay who were proto-industrialists there.

I was wondering about the destination. Thank you for the information. Except for the triangular Airmail stamps on the one cover, the rest are probably the newest stamps available at those dates. Though they are an interesting mix. As nowadays, values were available that would pay the postage without being quite so creative. Mr. Bong put a little effort into putting on a variety of stamps, especially the large group of semi-postals on the first cover. I think most of the time people weren't willing to spend the extra money just to send a piece of mail. Which of course is also why used values for Latvia Semi-Postal stamps are all higher than mint.

FWIW Postage up to 20 grams would have been 60 santims in 1930. So there are some stamps missing since the value showing is 47 santims. I'm not sure what the rate would have been for something heavier than 20 grams. The 2 missing stamps of the set are 10 santimi and 15 santimi. But of course anything is possible. Being a stamp collector I'd like to think that some of those are the missing ones though. :=)