1934 National Parks Series And 1935 Farley Reprints

Must be pretty special then!

I'm pretty sure it is...Opinions other than mine, which are obviously biased, are greatly appreciated. I look forward to what everyone has to say when I'm done with this thread...

Looking forward to the rest. Mighty impressive so far! And you mentioned having the special printings as well..

Stampman2002 wrote about precancels within his post on the 8 cent value on page 2: "I have not yet seen one legitimately used on a non-philatelic cover but would love to see an image if anyone has one."

While precanceling these large-sized postage stamps would be contrary to regulation, no doubt it happened, mostly as favor cancels. Here is one that looks legitimate - an unsealed 3rd class use from Rolla, Missouri. The notation of section 435 1/2 refers to the Postal Laws and Regulations - being an editing change to the 1924 PL&R compilation volume and published somewhere in the Postal Bulletin between 1924 and 1932.

John, Thank you so much for sharing that cover. That definitely appears to be a legitimate use, as it has the PL&R reference required by postal regulations.

Great item!

Scott 748

The nine cent value of the National Parks series, in red-orange (see previous comments about the color in the post for Scott 741), depicts a scene from Glacier National Park.

The photograph upon which the vignette was design was provided by the Interior Department to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The source photo is shown below:





From this image, one essay was produced. An example of the issued stamp is shown for comparison. If you compare the source photo and the essay with the issued stamp design, you see the couple in both the source photo and the essay have been removed for the finished stamp.






The essay was part of the Director, Bureau of Engraving and Printing's collection. The following are the production sheet and the page for the essay from that collection:






The plate blocks of this issue are moderately difficult to find well centered. The plate blocks for plate 21317 are shown here. This is a complete set of the three different positions. The yellowish tint to the top plate block is due to the scanner, not the block.







The following are some of the First Day Covers from this issue.

First is the Bates cachet. These cachets are known for all of the issues in the series with the cachet matching the color of the stamp, with black lettering. This is listed in Planty-Mellone as 748-1.




Next is an early example of the Linprint cachet. How do I know it is early? If you look at the cachet, there's a cinderella stamp-like design which is shown completely. This includes the "5 POSTAGE 5" along the bottom of the cinderella. After a few hundred (at most) were serviced, someone noticed the cinderella and officials refused to service any more. The cachet was modified with bars across the offending part of the design. George Linn was not happy about this, but it got the cachets serviced. This is listed in Planty-Mellone as 748-4.





I've been showing the Clara H. Fawcett cachet for all the issues. While I have most of them with hand-tinting, this is one which I am still looking for. This is listed in Planty-Mellone as 748-13.
Here's the untinted version:




Fawcett was not the only one who hand-tinted the cachets. The following cachet is one of only a handful of the C.S. Anderson cachets I've ever seen tinted. This is listed in Planty-Mellone as 748-14.





The final stamp in the series, the ten cent Smokey Mountains National Park stamp, issued October 8, 1934, will finish the presentation of the basic set of the National Parks Series of 1934. I'll post that shortly.

9 cent and 6 cent values paying the 15 cent registry fee on a penalty mail cover from Long Island City (Sunnyside Sta.), NY in October 1934.

John, great cover! Keep sharing these with me. Another use I'll have to go looking for now....

Just joining the chorus of appreciation for these postings. Seeing a new value posted every few days on my computer somehow has more impact than viewing several frames at a stamp show.
I like the essays. Well done!

Scott 749

The final stamp in the National Parks Series of 1934 is the ten cent Great Smokey Mountains National Park stamp, issued in gray black, on October 8, 1934.

The source photograph, provided by the National Parks Service to the Department of the Interior, and then to the Bureau of engraving and printing is the source of the vignette. The following is the source photograph:





From this photograph, six essays were prepared, one of the which was adopted. These are the six essays. An issued stamp is included for comparison.










All of these essays were part of the Director, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Alvin Hall's collection. The production sheet and the album page with the essays attached is shown below:





All of the essays shown throughout these posts have been BEP essays. These are all stamp sized essays. The following are Post Office Department versions of these essays. They are twice the size of BEP essays. Why? While I'm still researching this, I believe it was because the law required it. The only entity which could create an image the size of the stamp was the BEP; everyone else either had to reduce it to 3/4 size or it had to be a minimum of 1.5 times the size of the stamp. If fact, images of stamps were not allowed to be created at all until the 20th century. Imagine a stamp catalogue with no images.

The following are the images, in larger size, of the essays. Note the exhibit sheet provides the designer for each of the essays. There are only the five essays and it does not include the adopted design which was included in the BEP essays.









The plate blocks of this issue are not too difficult to find well centered. In fact, the bottom plate block for plate 21342 is usually found well centered. The following is the complete set of blocks for plate 21342.






The ten cent stamp generated some unique to the issue FDCs. There are also some cachets with subtle variations which are worth looking for.

The first of these is the cachets produced by Harry Ioor. There is a difference in the text at the bottom of the two covers shown below. These are listed in Planty-Mellone as 749-3 and 749-3a, respectively.






The cachet by Clara H. Fawcett is shown next. This design is hand tinted by the artist. This is listed in Planty-Mellone as 749-13.





One of the unique to issue designs is the one prepared by the Asheville, NC stamp club. Planty-Mellone listed this cachet as 749-21. This cacheted cover is shown below.





Another unique to the issue is the one for the Mountain View Hotel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Although not a cachet in the strictest since, as it uses hotel stationery, it is still a FDC use. This is not listed in the Planty-Mellone catalogs. Here it is:




The final FDC for your viewing is a hand-painted cover by an unklisted cachet maker. The artist is simply named at the bottom of the painting as Meissels. This cover is not listed in the Planty-Mellone catalog.




This completes the basic series. The next installment will show some combination FDC's and discuss the Peckmore engravings before moving on the the 1935 Farley Issues.

Combination Covers and Harry Peckmore

Having covered the 1934 National Parks Series, the next step is to look at some of the covers which sport many or all of the stamps in the series, then look at a nice collateral item which ties directly into the series.

The first two combination covers were both created by Louis Vandervelt, using a hand tinted Ralph Dyer cachet for the parks. These are both philatelically created, but still rather stunning.





The next item is scarce. It is a combination First Day Cover from F.R. Rice. The date of the cover is the date of issue for the last stamp in the series, the ten cent, which was issued October 8, 1934.





The next item is likely unique. It is a great piece of postal history, having a plethora of markings, labels and instructions. This cover, as can be seen, was sent from Kansas to Rome, Italy. A search of the internet for this yielded no results. I'm hoping someone who sees this can fill in the blank for me. Take a few minutes to examine both sides of the cover for all the markings.
John Becker has posted some covers on this thread as well; please be sure to go back and take a look at them - they're great covers!







The next item is a mystery, as I have been unable to confirm its origin. I suspect it is an engraving done as a trial for the Harry Peckmore engravings. More about this in a moment. Again, if anyone can definitively state the origins of this piece, I'd love to hear it.







Alright, let's roll back to the 1930's in the time machine. We're in the Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has become President two years earlier and he's a stamp collector - the whole world knows this. He's the reason stamp collecting took off in the 1930's.

It's a time when companies are working hard to get your business. Promotional items range from Carnival Glass to more prosaic household items. You can get them from the stores and in the products you buy, such as laundry powder.

The philatelic world was not without its promotions. For many of us, we can remember even in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's some of the ads in comics books, on matchbook covers and even your newspapers where you could send off a dime and get an envelope of stamps. Perhaps you had to have a wrapper from a bar of Ivory soap to go with the dime to become a full-fledged member of Captain Tim's Stamp Club of the Air, based out of Washington D.C.

One of the leaders of the time was Harry Lindquist. He was the editor for Stamps Magazine. He had a lot of competition including Linn's Stamp News, Meekel's and many others. To entice people to subscribe to Stamps Magazine, Linquist hired Harry Peckmore, a well known artist, to recreate the entire National Parks series in engravings. These were then printed in the color of the stamp, but without any reference to the stamp, the value it the portrait was meant to have or anything which could create a problem for Lindquist or Peckmore. These beautiful engravings then became the promotional item which Lindquist gave to anyone who subscribed to Stamps Magazine for a year.

Here is the complete set.














The installment will begin the discussion about why we have the 1935 Reprints, often referred to as "Farley's Follies."

UPDATE

When I was posting the information about Scott 742, the three cent Mount Ranier issue, I mentioned there was an essay I knew about but did not yet have. Well, I now have it!

This is an engraved image of the stamp, in reverse (meaning the tablet has been moved to the other side), without any lettering or values. It is certified by the Philatelic Foundation. I've also included the exhibit sheet it is mounted on.







What is significant about this essay is that it is the only engraved essay for any of the National Parks stamps and is also believed to be the only one in collector's hands.

So, in 1934 the National Parks Series was issued. Along the way, Postmaster General Farley had begun the practice of taking imperforate and ungummed sheets from the beginning of each press run for presentation to the President. This began with the Mother's Day stamp, Scott 737. Only the flat plate variety was presented as the switch to rotary press printings did not result in any publicity nor was the PMG inclined to make issue with the change in manufacturing from flat plate to rotary press printings.

It is rumored that a single sheet of the Byrd 1933 stamp was pulled and presented to Admiral Byrd. I can find no evidence this sheet survives to this date, if it ever did.

According to Max Johl and others, there was at least one perforated and gummed sheet of 400 for each of the Century of Progress issues. This is documented in the SPA as photographs of two centerline blocks of sixteen with gutters were shown and exhibited. The whereabouts of these blocks is unknown.

That brings us to the National Parks Series. If you look at each of the production sheets provided in the Director, Bureau of Engraving and Printings essay books, you'll note that seven sheets total were delivered imperforate and ungummed for each denomination of the series. Two of these were retained by PMG Farley, one was presented to the President, one to his Secretary Col Howe, two were presented to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and one is believed to have been presented to the Third Assistant Postmaster General Eilenberger. Secretary Ickes asked the Bureau to gum his sheets and they complied. This is the basis for the entries about gummed sheets. BOTH sheets were gummed, but for some reason, likely that it was after the fact and the presentation that gumming occurred, there are errors in the record about how many sheets were gummed.

Where are these sheets? Postmaster General Farley, who had had sheets for himself and his children, donated his entire collection to the Smithsonian Museum as his children evinced no interest in stamp collecting. President Roosevelt's sheets were sold in 1946 by H.R. Harmers along with the rest of his collection. In the 1950's Stanley Gibbons purchased the sheets and broke them up. When they did so, they rubbers stamped the logo of the firm on the back of each stamp and noted the plate position of each stamp.

Harold Ickes sheets were the subject of controversy throughout the 1930's and 1940's. He sold his collection in the 1940's before his death but the gummed imperforate sheets were not part of that auction. These came along later.

We know that a full set of sheets, signed by PMG Farley exists in collectors hands and was sold by H.R. Harmers this past June. The sheets realized $50,000. Also in that same sale was a set of twelve of the individual stamps from the Franklin Roosevelt collection. All have the requisite logo stamp and plate position. Here are the Roosevelt 1934 imperforate stamps. These are NOT the 1935 Farley reprintings.























These were printed in sheets of 200. Taking away the position blocks (arrow X 4, centerline and plate blocks of six, there can be no more than 156 sets of singles in existence for the Roosevelt imperforates. To my knowledge, only the one sheet was broken up. If both were, then that number increases to 312.

Next installment I'll discuss Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes' collection of the National Parks Stamps.

Fascinting