Postal Stationary: What Does W Mean?

I was looking up some cut squares in my catalog, all U###, but then suddenly a W### pops up. What is the W?

Don

Could you be more specific as to where we can find this?

Peter

Wrapper
Don

Edit; Wrappers used to have their own section but they merged them into a single section but retained the 'W' designation.

Now that does make sense Don. But if the W stands for wrapper, what does the "U" stand for?

Peter

U is just a code - in this case for postal stationary. Simply a lucky coincidence they can use W for wrapper. O for official is nice. But C for airmail? F for registration? J for postage due?
Wouldn't read too much into it.

Thanks, guys. Now, just what is a wrapper?

Don

The letters designating categories of stamps in the Scott regime should be viewed as arbitrary, and it is likely that at some point their copyright lawyers advised Amos or its predecessors that the more arbitrary these letters are, the better, because they give the appearance of an exercise of creative authorship, which is the basis of a claim of copyright in the numbering system. If airmail, registration and postage dues were numbered from A1, R1, and PD1 respectively, or if they didn't use categories and just numbered sequentially by date of issue, the likelihood that a federal judge would find insufficient authorship to support a copyright claim would go way up (although it will never be zero even with the current scheme).

Wrappers were light paper covers or bands used to hold together and provide a substrate for applying adhesives to materials such as newspapers or circulars that were carried short distances and/or were not amenable to placing an individual adhesive on the item due to the use of cheap rates per item or bulk rates for groups of items.

Thanks, 1964. I never knew such things existed. I wonder if I'll ever see one.

Don

Here are unused examples of two very common wrappers. To use them, they would be addressed then "wrapped" around items like newspapers, small posters, etc. The wrapper is gummed on the reverse side along the top arc and moistened to adhere to itself and created a small paper tube.

I have found Linn's has a helpful Alphabet soup: Scott catalog prefixes and suffixes:

http://www.linns.com/insights/stamp...uffixes.html

Thanks, John. I've never seen anything like that. When were they last used? I think I'd remember if any came to our house in the 1940's.

Don

Production of U.S. newspaper wrappers (Scott W)was discontinued in 1934.

Added: Still valid for the payment of postage except for the star die wrappers. Sometimes misidentified as letter sheets.

Great link. But I noticed they missed a few of the alternate meanings for those Scott prefixes, though:

EY - stamps they use north of the border, those hosers
I - egotist stamps
IRC - stamps for use in Internet chat rooms
LJ - stamps from Ljubljana, obviously
LOX - stamps that go good on a bagel
LP - stamps used to mail phonograph records (the big kind, with stereophonic sound)
MH - Machin hernia (what you get compiling a "basic" collection)
NIMH - secret stamps
OD - strange stamps
PR - stamps for spin doctors
Q - stamps for use of omnipotent Star Trek characters
RAJ - stamps from an Indian dukedom
SMH - Specialized Machin hernia (like a regular Machin hernia, but found in collectors buried in Machins, floor to ceiling, in their house)
TO - stamps from the place you're going
Y - because we like you!