What Was Your Very First Cover

Do you remember the first cover you acquired? Do you still have it?

I was fortunate to have a mailman that took me under his wing when I first showed some interest in collecting stamps. I was 10 years old. He put me on his list for special and first day covers which I received for a number of years. It is nothing special but this was the first cover I received and it holds a special place in my collecting history.

That would be a self-made FDC of the US Battle of Shiloh stamp. Instructions were in the stamp column in the local newspaper, so I sent off a blank 6-3/4 envelope inside another, folded in half with 4 pennies. The envelope came back through the mail with the crease plus dents from the coins. It's still buried somewhere. I'm slightly surprised not to see these in more collector's junk lots or even in non-collector junk accumulations, since used stamps saved by packrats is common enough.

For some reason, I never got into FDCs. Rather, I tried to collect any non-US mail I could on a budget of zero dollars, mostly picture post cards.

Lakota Indian Territory cover. Fired my imagination and 45 years later I am still collecting.

My mother gave this to me when I was about 12yrs. old. A letter sent to my Great-Great Grandmother by her first husband. He died at Duckport Louisiana in the Civil War. That started it.............

My first cover was a shoebox full of them, found in a flea market, paid a few $. However, one of them really "set the hook" so to speak.
Just a cover front but what an address! Picked this up in the late 70's so library research was my only source of information. Didn't find information until I had web access.
Here's a post on this cover from 2014, and the cover front.

https://goscf.com/t/40009

Wow! What fantastic stories that cover tells.