1925 First Day Cover?

I see a cover on ebay with a postmark that would be correct for the first day of issue of the stamp with the phrase "First Day Cover" stamped on the envelope. It is from April 1925. Is that possible or did that phrase have to be stamped on the envelope sometime afterward since no such designation would have existed at that time?

First day covers were being serviced that early, though the POD did not begin giving them a distinctive FDOI cancel until later in the 1930's. Cachets came later, also. And before cachets, it was not uncommon for the cover to be stamped "First Day of Issue" at the time of issue. And I've seen early covers marked as you describe ("First Day Cover" rather than "First Day of Issue"), including some that look to have been printed (not stamped) for generic use. I'd want to see the cover in question before venturing a specific conclusion, but it is not impossible, or even unlikely, that the mark is original, and was not applied later.

I may be wrong (I probably am LOL) but my first instinct when I saw this cover is that the first day cover notation is a later add-on. There were several individuals such as Nickles and Worden who serviced FDCs at this time and all used covers with no cachet whatsoever.

I don't collect FDCs but have a few with similar hand stamps.
Don

I wonder about these things sometimes there are others from the same postmark at 1AM so either someone was making first day cover then or someone had a friend because it not only has 2 cancels they look like 2 diff cancels

Don, those are later, when it was common to mark the cover. The one in question is dated 1925.

These kinds of markings are common for the era. Here are three from 1923, from a Mccusker/Siegel auction, and nothing negative is mentioned regarding the markings:




And a couple (1926, 1927) from my own collection:

I don't collect first day covers per se, although if a cover I'm interested in happens to be a FDC, so much the better. I just came across this cover and some others while doing a search for related material and was curious about the hand stamp for a 1925 cover since I thought there had been a recent thread somewhere on SCF discussing when the earliest FDC servicing took place(can't put my fingers on it right now). Below are some others for this stamp #551 on ebay, all of which are advertised as FDC but which do not carry any type of cachet/hand stamp specifically noting first day cover or first day of issue.

https://goscf.com/t/46354 ... SCF thread

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/18/s...roversy.html ... NYTimes article

I see alot of those have 2 cancels, so much for trying to make them look neat.