Sacramento, CA To Switzerland Via Ny, Registered?

Hi,

I have this cover:


I don't really know anything about registered mail, in the US, during the early 20th century. So I could use some help or pointed in the right direction.

The cover entered the mainstream as registered in Sacramento. It then passed through NY and was hand stamped NY and a registry label was added. Why?

Then on to Switzerland.

Could someone help me understand more about the NY stop and the rationale for the label?

thanks,

Larry

Idhaber:

Effective Jan 1, 1883, the Universal Postal Union issued a regulation that required all member countries (the US joined in 1875) to apply a paper label with a large "R" with a tracking number to each piece of registered mail from the original country (in this case the US) to a foreign destination.

All mail from the US to a foreign country had to go through one of the 30 or so Exchange Offices which handled the transport of mail between the US and foreign countries. Registered letters from foreign countries into a US destination DID NOT receive one of these labels.

New York, along with Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore handled most of the mail between the US and Europe, Africa, South America, and the Near East.

Your label is one that was applied at New York. These labels from the other post office mentioned above and below typically had their name of the Exchange Office printed on them, but on some smaller Exchange offices, the name was in manuscript or rubber stamped.

New Orleans and Mobile handled mail between the US and come countries in the Caribbean and Central America. Offices in El Paso, Laredo, and Eagle Pass, Texas handled most of the mail to Mexico, and San Francisco, Cal, Seattle and Tacoma WA, handled most of the mail to the Far East. There were other, smaller Exchange Offices, and a few were established but no covers with their labels have yet been recorded.

In addition to registered mail which originated in the United States, registered mail in transit between Europe and parts of Central and South America which was handled at the New York Exchange Office received these labels. Similarly, mail going in the other direction, handled at New York en route to Europe, had the New York labels added.

The only exception for the US was that mail to Canada was exempt from the addition of the label. I've never seen the regulation which provided this exemption, but I suspect that it was a mutual agreement between the US and Canada to avoid excessive paper work because of the large volume of registered mail between the two countries.

The use of this label was discontinued by the US postal system effective Jan 24, 1911, although there were a few covers that passed through New York during the latter part of the month that received these labels.

During the 28 years the label was in use (1883 - 1911), the records indicate that over 40 million registered letters passed through these Exchange Office leaving the country.

I hope this answers the question without too much confusing detail. Please feel free to ask questions.

Mike

Mike,

Thanks very much. I sort of knew about the Exchange Offices, but hadn't known that these still operated as "late" as 1909.

Thanks very much, very clear and extremely helpful.

Much obliged,

Larry

The label is also listed in Scott Specialied U.S. catalog - Scott FX-NY1. There are several varieties of this based on measurements and fonts.

Larry:
You are most welcome.

Battlestamps:
I would caution you and anyone else when looking at these New York Exchange Office labels based on the dimensional measurements in the Scott catalog. They are both suspect and incomplete. I've worked with these New York labels (both the ones with EXCHANGE and CITY) for several years now, and have never been able to reconcile my data with that in Scott.

Most of the other Exchange Office label descriptions are OK as there is generally only one variety. I am aware of at least one additional Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco label type, but I have not encountered enough examples to be absolutely confident in my findings.

Question for MML1942:Is there a specific book this is printed in? I'd like to learn more about the 30 or more specific offices and their specific markings.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Hal:

Unfortunately there is no single publication with the type of information you are asking about. [It's on my "bucket list"].

The primary research on this subject was performed by Barbara Mueller in the 1960s and 1970s (yes, that's almost ancient history!), and was published by the US Stamp Society in The Specialist as a 7 part series in 1972-73 (issues No 512 - 520). These articles are available on the USSS website:

http://www.usstamps.org/

The Mueller articles do identify most of the Exchange Offices, but you should consider most of the details, notations used, and especially the number of items recorded is now out-of-date.

About 2000, several collectors (Al Kugel, Eliot Landau, and Nicholas Lombardi) began to develop a Census of the known covers with labels from the "minor" Exchange Offices, initially excluding New York, primarily because of the large number of covers known.

Lombardi was responsible for the Labels being listed in Scott Catalog ( a great boost to the hobby), but the dimensional information was developed by an unidentified third party, and I have never been able to obtain images of each of the specific sub-types of the New York labels from him.

The Scott Catalog valuations are nonsense for the most part as well.

This Census is published on-line at:

http://www.usstamps.org/committees/...study-group/

and is updated irregularly. The Census for San Francisco and Boston are maintained as two separate files as there is a larger number of known covers for these Exchange Offices than for many of the smaller and less active Exchange Offices.

This latter link points to the Registered Mail Study Group page, but this group is inactive with no leader. I attempted a while back to stimulate interest in the subject with little success.

I have a private census of these covers from the New York Exchange Office, consisting of some 3000 documented covers (with images), and a file of cover images for probably another 3000 covers which I have not had time to process. I "harvest" cover images from ebay, Delcampe, and all the major auction sites for future study. [Thanks to Idhaber for adding his cover to my harvest.]

If you have general questions, continue on the SCF Board here, and I'll answer best I can without "writing the book" on-line. If you have specific questions or prefer to continue offline, contact me via the private message system.

Mike

mml1942 - very useful information. I've saved your posts for reference. Thank you.