Show Me Your Highway Post Office Aka Hpo Covers

Two more:

Puzzled why the First Trip stamp wasn't limited to Trip 1. Multiple examples in this thread where First Trip is Trip 2 and later.

In the example shown, Trip 1 was the first trip from Columbus to Durant. Trip 2 was the first trip from Durant to Columbus. Both are equally collectible.

Still working towards getting the new online HPO catalog published. It has catalog numbers for all 1898 trips and is illustrated with images of each cancel, a full cover, and vintage maps for each of the 404 routes. I am targeting release in the next few weeks.

Edit: The catalog covers both 'First Trip' and 'Last Trip' cancels and covers.
Don

This looks like it will be an excellent reference! Looking forward to browsing when the site is up and running.

hope you will like one of the three covers

I scanned all covers I have. #5 & #6 they are 10 envelope. For the last 4 covers I will like your opinions. Thanks.

The first five shown directly above are 'First Trip' Highway Post Office covers, value is around $1 (US) each. The others are event covers and also have a value of around $1 (US) each.

Don

Thanks

A non philatelic HPO cover.

Apart from special First Trip and Last Trip cancellations, did regular HPO mail get HPO cancels, similar to RPO cancels? Or was this mail simply treated like standard mail and postmarked at the receiving post office?

gslaten, why do you believe your First Trip HPO cover is non-philatelic?

GregAlex,


Yes. Since the HPO routes were administered within the RPO system, the markings look quite similar, but with "HPO" instead:





I believe these 4 to be non-philatelic, but most any of these can be foolers. There are many of these addressed to collectors.

John...an assumption on my part as all the HPO covers I have seen with the first trip cancel have had a cachet on them. I could certainly be wrong.

Ah ok, there were no government-applied cachets for the early HPO routes - just the cancel. So a lot of early HPO covers have only the cancel. Here is a similar matched pair for an early route, each individually might look non-philatelic at first, but as a pair it becomes obvious they are philatelic. They are also sealed without any contents and were never opened. I would consider 99+% of all first/last day HPO covers to be philatelic.



As a tangent, here are the announcement cards for the 1st and 3rd HPO routes, the only ones for which cards were sent out:

Very cool covers. Thanks for the information. I had no idea.