Scott 114 Interesting Cover

Picked this up a few years ago for a few dollars as it seemed interesting. Has anybody else acquired interesting covers with unusual philatelic usages?

That 114 appears to have very good margins. Amazed that someone would use a mint Classic in this way--I wouldn't have done it.

This is an "event" cover commemorating the anniversary of an "event." In that sense it is not unusual at all. Here's another one produced by the Chicago Philatelic Society in my collection:


If there is an "unusual" factor here it is the event itself. Based on these two Chicago Philatelic Society covers they created event covers for events largely ignored otherwise by the philatelic community. They are still around, as CHICAGOPEX, but most of these kinds of covers seem to date from the late 1940's to early 1960's. Here are some more from an ebay listing:



Basil

The 114 probably had no gum or a thin.

I have a 115 that was used on an event cover from the 1930s.

The stamp, according to the 1950 Scott's Specialized Catalog, which I happened to have in my library, was $3.50 in mint. That's a pretty good premium for a stamp almost 70 years ago.

That said, the tie between the stamp and the cover may have been the reason it was used. This would have been the first stamp which pictured a train.

Just a guess on my part.

Stampman2002, I agree that the stamp provided a tie to the cover as it has a locomotive. As for the stamp being $3.50, we should remember that a loaf of bread cost 14¢ and the minimum wage was 40¢ an hour. Even so, we can't buy a mint 114 today for $28 so it's a valid point on your part.

I wonder if they used 114 for every cover they created for this event or many different railroad-related stamps and this one is semi-unique. It would be interesting to learn if others have the same cover with the same stamp on it or different stamps.

Here's a closeup of the postmark and stamp.

I seriously doubt every such cover would have a 114. Note the glue mark at the top, so this was probably a no gum stamp at minimum. Same addressee for all the CPS covers, so then why not a 114 on each?

There was someone in the 1980s that used the Trans-Missippi dollar values and similar older stamps on topical covers. They were thinned stamps but still worth some money.

I don't know if anyone would consider this a similar type of use. This was a cover to commemorate the first run on this line and used Scott 938, issued in 1945, as a tie-in to the final destination of the train in Texas.