Unaddressed FDCs

Back "in the day" if you wanted a First Day Cover, you taped the approriate coins to a 3x5 card (exact change only!), enclosed it with a note as to the stamp configuration you wanted, and an addressed envelope for the stamp/FDC cancel (with or without a cachet). A few weeks later your OFFICIAL First Day cover would arrive in the mail. If you were really into it, you motored to the First Day city, bought your stamps affixed them and handed the covers to a postal employee. You could either wait (an unaddressed cover) or let them drop it in the mail to you. Servicers did it that way with their thousands of covers.

Somewhere along the way the postal service allowed (forced) you to purchase your own stamps at your local post office, affix them, then send them in within 30 days of the issue date. They would even allow you to enclose yet another envelope so they could return the FDC's to you that way (again, unaddressed covers). "Registered Servicers" were allowed 90 days (50 cover minimum and a small charge).

Does anyone know WHEN that happened?

It seems to me that it was at that point that unaddressed covers became a whole lot easier and less "unique". Perhaps they should even be of lesser value after that date too?

wc

From the New York Times:

December 18, 1988
STAMPS
STAMPS; The Great First-Day Cover Controversy

By BARTH HEALEY

FOR a collector of modern first-day covers, every day is 30 days long and most American towns turn out to be Merrifield, Va.

One result has been that this area of specialization has fallen on some bad times. Another more important result has been that collectors have found a way to enliven what has become a routine hobby.

First-day covers are supposed to be envelopes canceled on the date that a stamp is issued, most often in a city connected with the stamp.

Before 1922 the Post Office seldom announced where or when a stamp would first be available. Most first- day covers from that era are honest- to-goodness letters that were mailed when an alert correspondent realized that she had bought a stamp on the day it was issued.

With the 10-cent special delivery stamp issued July 12, 1922, the Post Office announced dates and places of issue. All the collector had to do was get there, sometimes an expensive and time-consuming venture, or send envelopes with a check and ask the postmaster to affix the stamps and cancel and mail back the envelope.

The first first-day cancellations cannot be distinguished for any other cancellations. It was not until 1937 that ''First Day of Issue'' was included in the cancellation.

As first-day covers became more popular, the burden on first-day cities became intolerable. There were reports of a kind of cheating: some covers were canceled with the first- day date for several days. And the bookkeeping, involving thousands of small remittances, created problems.

Thus it was decided in 1977 that there would be a 15-day grace period. A first-day cancel dated July 1, for example, would be applied until July 15. This permitted collectors to buy the new stamps locally, put them on envelopes and send the covers to the first-day city. In 1982, the grace period was extended to 30 days, and sometimes it has been extended to 45, 60 or even 75 days.

The practice, which is not peculiar to the United States, yields anomalies like one first-day cover prepared by the Fleetwood organization, a marketer of new issues. The stamps, a joint issue to mark Australia's bicentennial, were first postmarked Jan. 26, 1988, in Washington; by then it was already Jan. 27 in Australia, but the cover also bears a Jan. 26 ''first day'' cancellation from Sydney.

Furthermore, virtually all first-day mail is now cancelled at the Postal Service's Philatelic Sales division in Merryfield, Va. Thus the cancellation that reads Chicago or Boston is also deceptive. (They are very efficient in Merryfield, but also they are also human. Sometimes one stamp gets the postmark intended for another.) This is well intentioned in the interests of supplying perhaps half a million first-day covers for each issue.

But is a stamp ''issued'' in September in Chicago and canceled in December in Merryfield, Va., deserving of that slogan ''First Day of Issue''? Many collectors now say no and have turned to getting true first-day date cancels. The ''true dated'' covers go under the paradoxical name of unofficial covers, because they are handled by real postal clerks in real post offices with real date stamps.

Collectors of unofficial covers have two options: to get to the first-day site, accept the official ''First Day of Issue'' cancellation and then ask a postal clerk to apply a ''real'' date stamp, thus proving that the fuzzily defined official cancellation was really applied on the first day. These are called validated covers.

What is more fun is to buy a stamp locally on the first day of issue, select an appropriate post office nearby and call that your first-day city.

For example, the two ''Love'' stamps this year were issued in Pasadena, Calif., on July 4 and in Shreveport, La., on Aug. 8. But collectors in Colorado, Ohio and Oklahoma could have gone to towns named Loveland. A network of hobbyists trade such covers, and is most easily reachable through the American First Day Cover Society. Fees are modest ($12 a year or less), and include a subscription to First Days, the society's magazine. For information write to Monte Eiserman, 14359 Chadbourne, Tex. 77079.

Thanks, KGB! Exactly what I needed. Although some things have changed since 1988 the basic info is all there. Even the opinions the writer voices are still being discussed.

wc

I have more than 100 of them! I got most for free.

While I certainly didn't get my unaddressed for free as I had to pay for a stamp, envelope, and postage I've found that I'll add a cachet to them for my collection that I show people.