Amateur Hand-Painted FDCs

We have some very talented folks here who create their own cachets & FDCs.

https://goscf.com/t/10274& ... stampvirgin uses a Phaser Printer

I have an irrational fondness for Hand-Painted FDCs and, like that stuff that covered my fridge for decades, the more naive, the better.

Q/ Anybody more like these?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

The uniformity of the width of the lines makes me think 'marker':

I don't recall any comparable covers in my collection of airmail/aviation FDC's, but here is an early First Flight cover with elaborate doodling, and beautiful script:



I also have a lot of WWII patriotic covers, some of which were handpainted. I don't know if she would qualify as an "amateur" or not, but Gladys Adler covers from WWII are very collectible. Here's one from my collection:



ikey,

I might point out that Ben Kraft cachets are often "addon." He would find an FDC without a cachet and hand paint it. I don't know if that's the case for your cover or not since it is dated contemporaneously (I think) with his period of cover work. There were some Ben Kraft covers on ebay last week from WWII that drew my attention, but I let them pass because I knew they were not "of the period." While Kraft's style is "primitive," he's probably done enough covers to question his "amateur" status. That makes no difference to me. If I collected that particular stamp, I would love to have your cover in my collection.

Basil

Jenny2U,

I hope people pay attention to the postmark of the cover you posted. That even makes it more collectible, at least to those of us who are into that kind of thing.

Basil

One of the nice things about collecting FDC's is that there are few rules. I think the major drawback is the majority have little or no value which discourages people from collecting them. Here we go again with the value of a collection.
Tom

Tom,

I don't think it is the lack of value here that is the issue so much as it is that many philatelists consider FDC's to be "contrived" and not true "postal history." Some FDC's can be very valuable, like this one:



Even modern FDC's can be surprisingly valuable, like this one:



(First day covers of C72c are perhaps the most scarce of all modern FDC's.)

Sure, lots of FDC's are not particularly valuable. But you could say that as well for most stamps. So it is not value, or the lack thereof per se, that accounts for a lack of interest in FDC's, but rather their status as philatelic creations.

Do you belong to AFDCS?

Basil

I think a big part of the perceptions about FDCs are based upon the 'Franklin Mint' effect. It's the fact that many companies marketed FDCs as great investments while peddling them to the point of market saturation. Many folks were taken in by this marketing and they (or their families) were later disappointed to find out they were not great investments. This was obviously not good for the hobby either.

Here is another one.


Don

Jenny, Basil, Don ... lovely, lovely, lovely!

And thank you, Basil, for the backgrounder on Mr Kraft.

The not-of-the-period distinction seems a bit like bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted, as 99.44% of FDCs are not-of-the-day, but that's our hobby.

And yes, Tom, FDCs *are* contrived, which is why I do not collect them but have, from time-to-time, acquired & retained a few.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

ikey, re: your opening post, I find very little that is irrational in you. I think the word is 'quirky.' (I mean that as a compliment.)

I guess my feeling is I would have rather had that box of 600 FDC's that Don had(outbid) than to have one stamp I paid $75.00 for.
Tom

Maybe I'll decorate some of my fdcs, with me having so many....

I don't know much about these, but they appear hand done and they aren't really FDCs.
Don

I like the simplicity of this cover. The story is not so simple

The battle of Solferino (June 1859) was the decisive episode in the struggle for Italian unification. The French, allied to the Sardinians, with Emperor Napoleon III at their head, faced the Austrian troops. The first exchange of gunfire took place shortly after three in the morning; by six o'clock the battle was in full swing; bright sunshine bore down on some 300,000 men who were slaughtering each other. In the afternoon, the Austrians abandoned their positions one by one; when night fell, the battlefield was strewn with more than 6,000 dead and 40,000 wounded.

In 1936 you could always trust in a babe with wings to make the delivery possible...........

Grrr image uploader over wrote the images without warning in my post above, and now that I've noticed it a few days later, it will not allow me to edit the post!

Here are the original images I uploaded, sorry.
Don

Worth the reload, Don.