1940 Pan-American On 1904 Pan-American Envelope - Philatelic Contrivance Or Postal History?

Look at the following cover and let me know what you think. I'll post the rest of the story in a day or two....

Here's a neat cover with Scott 895, the 1940 Pan-American stamp on a 1904 Pan-American Expo envelope. It is not a first day cover, but is it a philatelic cover made by a stamp collector or is it a piece of postal history?

Postal history is most often taken to be about routes, rates, etc.

This ain't that.

Event covers are prized when they are postmarked at the time of the event.

This ain't quite that, either.

But it is pretty, and deserves a place in your collection, perhaps with some ancillary material.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Agree with Ikey, not postal history but certainly collectible.

There are many examples of Civil War patriotic covers used many years later. In Bill Weiss's fine book on Civil War Patriotic Cover in many cases the only examples he could find were late usages.

I occasionally find unused WWII Patriotic covers and they are worth very little $ so I give them to my wife to use as colorful stationary.

The original envelope is considered a Pan Am Expo Advertising Cover. Unused examples can be found for about $20- $35, nicer used examples with 1901 Expo cancels run around $100-150.

In my opinion a non-contemporaneously used cover postmarked 40 years later like this one makes it a philatelic cover. But Ken could also be right, I don't know if the unused cover carried enough value in 1940 to prevent it from simply being used as an spare envelope. Probably only definitive way to know is if you can identify the sender/addressee as a stamp collector (or if you have the contents and you are going let us know the back story!)
Don

I'll let you decide whether you think this is philatelic or postal history. Here's the rest of the story...

The contents for this cover were included. I've downloaded all four pages of the letter. You'll find the information at the bottom of page three and top of page four germane to whether this is a philatelic cover. In her letter, this lady states "...I had a bunch brought me from the fair in Buffalo in 1901. Have kept them all these years. Thought it would be nice to put the new Pan American stamp on them & start them out. That is the reason you get one..."

Without the contents, this cover would have been labeled a philatelically created item, but it isn't. There doesn't appear to be any stamp collecting tie, just an older lady remembering she had them when she saw the new (in 1940) Pan American stamp and decided to finally use them.

And now, you have the rest of the story.

I vote philatelic. "I thought it would be nice to put the Pan American stamp on them ..."

100 % philatelic. While it might have been used to send a letter from 1 person to another the cover itself was produced Entirely to create a collectible item.

I concur with Jenny2U and stallzer. What makes something philatelic in nature is all about 'intent'. With the passing of the years all too often the original 'intent' has to be inferred and assumptions made. But in this case, with the supporting letter, the question of intent is clearly and unmistakably defined.
Don

I would like to suggest that there is philatelic, and, then, there is Philatelic.

Using pretty stationery because it is pretty is a whole lot less philatelic than "I matched the subject of the illustration on the cover to the subject of the stamp, and got them postmarked at the post office nearest to the event venue on the anniversary of the event, et al".

Having read the enclosure, I think that this one is lower-case (eg almost inadvertently) philatelic, eg, nobody mentions being a collector, or saving the cover, or ...

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I pretty much agree with Ikey about this one but I think these discussions of which items are "Philatelic" are fascinating.

Can we agree that the following are "Philatelic?

1 FDCs except for the very early classics?
2 Cams & Fams?
3 First Flights?
4 Event covers?

I am not a fan of the above but some are very collectable and command good prices.

I like the next ones but I think they too are Philatelic

1. Bisects from the 1930s?
2. Transposed vignettes from the 1930s?
3. Novelty illegal usages?

All 3 of these are collectible.

Now how about 20th Century Fancy Cancels? As I understand it these were a cooperative effort between the collectors and the postmasters.

If these are Philatelic does that make NYFM cancels and covers Philatelic?

As for the cover above that started this discussion if it had been sent in the proper period it too could have been Philatelically inspired and I'm sure many were.

If these Exposition Covers are Philatelic does that mean some or all Civil War Patriotics are Philatelic?

It all makes my head spin. I sell many of these items on ebay and I try and describe them properly but I never use the term "Philatelic"
I would title an item "Stamp Dealer Cover with Late Usage SC #238"
rather than "Stamp Dealer Cover with Philatelic Use SC #238"

I think "late usage" or "over franked" are more descriptive than Philatelic which is too subjective.

I think that a philatelic designation is broader than just 'stamp collecting'; it also encompasses other intents. If I am a fan of trains, notice the PO is selling a train stamp, and quickly hand draw a train on the corner of the cover; I have made a cover considered to be philatelic even if my only real intent was to promote trains.

You could argue that most flight-type covers are doubly philatelic. The actual stamp issue is philatelic, because there's no need for a designated air-mail stamp. And the cover itself is philatelic because its carriage and the host of special cancellations were usually designed for sale or use by stamp collectors. But lots of people love all that Zeppelin hokum. A big difference from the Siege of Paris balloon issues, where the carriage of the stamp on the flight served a real postal purpose.

But whatever floats your boat or flies your Kitty Hawk.

The "official" definition of a philatelic cover is one that was sent through the mail for the purpose of creating a collectible item. Oddly, many covers of this type were later disparaged as only being philatelic creations and therefore not worthwhile as collectibles. While this is probably still true of mass produced FDCs, flight and event covers, other types of philatelic covers have become very collectible. I don't consider philatelic as a term to be avoided in the concern that value will be influenced. It is what it is.

I would not agree that 99 percent of first flight covers (this includes CAMs and FAMs as they are just sub-areas) are philatelic. They are quite different from the rest of the items in KRelyea's list in that these were actual mail conveyed by the official mail system from one place to another typically being franked with the correct and current postage for that particular route. Normally they are back stamped to show that they actually went by that route by that method of conveyance. By this same token I also believe that ship and paquebot mail and railway mail and pony express mail and such are also not philatelic because they also went through the mail system from one place to another and bear the appropriate and current postage. As philatelists, one of the things we find interesting about old mail is that it documents the history of how mail was moved from one location to another, the routes it took, the methods of its conveyance, the postage costs, the number of days it travelled, etc. etc. I do agree that there is an element of being philatelic to first flights in that they were created to go on that new method of carrying the mail on its first day of operation and that it often but does not always carry special markings that were used only on that first day, but that does not make it entirely philatelic in my mind and in the way the other categories of mail that are mentioned along with it in KRelyea's lists. As for airmail stamps, I also do not see them as being philatelic creations anymore than I see postage due stamps or special delivery stamps or war tax stamps or the like. Post offices created airmail stamps as a method for tracking how much mail was being sent via their air mail methods as opposed to surface methods. This was necessary since air mail was more costly than surface mail in those days and they had to have a tax on mail that was carried by that method to be able to pay for it. Airmail stamps were a simple solution to a postally necessary function, the same as the other back of the book stamps that I mentioned were also needed for paying for postally necessary functions.

Kimo
Interesting. But, on your last section, I wonder how Great Britain has managed to run a postal service for the last hundred years without air-mail stamps?
Geoff