James Cook First Cover And Napus 72nd Annual Convention

I'm trying to identify some of the things in my grandafther's stamp collection and I came across these two envelopes. The James Cook one, I know what it is, but when you look it up on sites like Mystic Stamp, the first covers they are selling have a different image of Cook. I can't find this exact one.

And I can't find the NAPUS one at all, anywhere.

Does anybody know something about these? Thanks!

OK! That's what I get for posting in a hurry after a long day! Here's the picture!

The top cover is not a first day cover, but a souvenir of the NAPEX show. The Captain Cook stamp was issued as a se-tenant pair, one horizontal (as shown on this cover) and a vertical stamp with his portrait.

Oh my... that bottom cover. I collect Captain Cook stamps and covers; I'm gonna have to hunt one of those down. I THINK I have a cover with that stamp on it. I wasn't aware of that particular cover; does it have a manufacturer name on it?

Sorry, just saw this. The only printing on the envelope is pictured above. Grandpa kept it in the plastic cover it came in; I carefully opened it and checked inside the unsealed envelope, but all that's in there is a blank piece of stiff stock paper to keep the envelope from bending.

CaffienatedSquirrel, if you do track it down, can you email me what info you find? This collection also belongs to my Mom, so I can't let anything go without her approval, but I would like to get some idea of the value. Once we have a better idea what we have we may be interested in selling some things, and if so I will let you know. Thanks!

Hi Twslisa.

It is worth the time trying to find out more about these, but for first day and event covers of this vintage the normal commercial value tends to be in the range of 10 cents to 25 cents each. Spend some time on ebay and use the ADVANCED SEARCH search page. Check the box partway down that filters your results to only SOLD auctions. Ignore any auctions that have not been completed and where the item has not actually sold. About 95 of the auctions for this kind of relatively recent material are offered with starting prices that are well above what people are actually willing to pay and so those starting prices do not reflect anything but a seller's hopes of getting more for their material than what it is actually worth. Actual values are determined only when an item sells. If you would like to test this out for yourself, put up 5 or 10 auctions yourself and put a starting bid of 1 cent plus a shipping fee of 47 cents for up to three auctions which is the actual price of a first class stamp to send them to the winner. By doing this you will get a feel for what your material will likely sell for should you decide to sell it.

Thanks! I didn't figure on getting rich off these anytime soon! I've been looking the stamps up on the mystic stamp site, and they're asking 15c for most of the ones I have so my expectations weren't that high.

Mystic is a good place to start, but you need to remember that they are a full service company with substantial overhead costs and a need to make a healthy profit on their sales. What this means is that it costs them money just to have something in their stock and sell it, and then they need to make a good profit to be able to stay in business and for their staff to make a living wage. They buy material by the carton full and pay a small fraction of what they sell things for. An individual seller is unlikely to approach what a large company like Mystic is able to charge. Still, their prices give you a relative value of one FDC or event cover vs. another which is useful to know. Again, spending time on ebay and ONLY LOOKING at the SOLD auctions will be more helpful in giving you a sense of what you might be able to obtain if you spend your time selling things one or a few at a time. If you decide to sell to a dealer such as Mystic or any of the others you would not be able to get close to what things actually sell for on ebay since dealers must legitimately cover their operating costs make a strong profit to stay in business.

Collecting these kinds of covers is best done for the pure fun and learning you get from it rather than any expectation of making a profit or even just getting your money back out of it. Inexpensive items like these are a great and affordable hobby. The excitement of finding and buying things on ebay or at the dealers is definitely worth the very modest cost and much less expensive than most other hobbies. My suggestion is to keep your collection as a memory of your grandfather and build on it for the sheer fun of it.

Agreed. The problem with covers and similar items was that they were sold as something akin to an investment. The truth is that most are now worth far less than the original stamps would have cost to buy. But if you pick them up now, they're cheap, you get the stamps and you often find an attractive cover design. I recently picked up, pretty cheap, a boxful of Documents Philateliques produced with each new issue to raise money for the Postal Museum in Paris. Yvert doesn't even bother to price them anymore, but I like the account of the background to the issue, the "proof" and the cancelled copy of the stamp.