Any Info On This Stamp And 1944 Cover Appreciated

Please see scan of this USA 1944 cover. I have contacted the Philatelic club mentioned on the cover but could not find much info on it. Has anyone got any info on the cover & stamp? I could not find info on line. The stamp looks like a late 19thc USA stamp. I maybe wrong so help needed. Thanks in advance.

Did you search for the Glen Ellyn Philatelic Club? If they're still in existence I'm sure they would have information on the cover.

Hi yes as stated in my post I have contacted the Philatelic club and they are in existence, I am awaiting their reply

Oh shoot, sorry duncanvr. It's been a long week, and also my head is stuffed up by my first cold of this winter season.

Just trying to see if anyone else has info. I also wanted to know what the postmark is ?? RPO

Railroad Post Office . Actually railroad co have car name rpo where they was sorting the Mail on Their way . As a railroad modeller for 40 years I was not in need of Google for that. Funny 2 weeks ago I post one of my oscale rpo car on another stamp forum

Thanks area66. That explains why they are using an older train stamp so this in fact is a railway cover.

Holy smoke! The engine on the stamp is similar to the engine on the cachet...but I can't imagine someone using that stamp for an event cover, even in 1944.

Why not use the 1944 railroad commemorative to get the R.P.O. cancel?

I think the stamp is

USA stamp SC#114 3c Blue locamotive from 1869

am I correct?

They must have used it as its an aniversary event cover

Here what I think . At a moment the stamp club make print those covers to finance their activity and someone at the club put an old canceled stamps and the cancel it again with the hammer they make for this cover . So actually the cover will have more value if it was the original sold by the club and the stamps will have more value out of this non post used cover and if it was not canceled again with something out of the period of the stamps . Look closely the stamp ad trace of old cancel

Or possibly a 2nd fainter RPO cancel as you can see part of a purple cds just above the stamp. It continues at the top right corner of the stamp but is the same colour as the rpo cancel so I think done at the same time. They must have had a mint copy of the stamp in 1944 to use? I still have not figured the wording at the top of the RPO cancel, any ideas? CH?? OMAHA? I certainly would not remove it from the cover as the cover maybe scarce?

I think the cancels reads "CHI & OMAHA".
Don

Event cover with stamp used way out of period. Fairly common philatelic concoction of the time.

The Glen Ellyn Philatelic Club did that, too, as in this example currently for sale:



Actually, the Glen Ellyn Philatelic Club issued four (4) different cachet designs for that specific event, which is mentioned in the "Rail by Mail" book you can find online. Here's the excerpt:

The cat value of a mint 114 in 1944 was about $2 (about $26 in today's money), but a stamp with a thin or no gum would be almost worthless. I'm sure they could find enough NG/hidden defect examples to use.

A used Scott catalog number 114 blue steam engine stamp today is worth about $1 - you can buy as many as you like for that price on ebay all day long. Some do go for a few dollars more, but those are ones with highly collectable cancels - an RPO is a fairly common cancelation. The second reason this one would be worth about $1 on a good day is the image is very off center making it not so collectable as a used stamp.

There is little value on the cover since this is a purely philatelic creation and the stamp was used so far out of its 1869 timeframe that it has no added value as a stamp with a legitimate use from its general timeframe.

One might call this a railway cover, but that may be a bit of an overstatement. It was simply processed and canceled in one of the huge number of train cars that were essentially a boxcar with the inside set up with post office clerks and equipment to process and sort mail as it was being carried from one city to another to speed it along. There are some less common RPOs between the tiny and little known towns and on the tiny and little known rail lines, but Chicago and Omaha was one of the bigger ones given the size of those cities and their surrounding areas that fed mail into and out of them.

This is a fun cover to have in your collection, but the commercial resale value would make it something that you would expect to find for sale in a dealer's $1 box.