First Day Covers With "Blocks Of Four" Stamps

Are there specialty collectors of First Day Covers with "blocks of four" stamps?

I suppose there are - I have seen too many to think nobody would be interested. Also, it depends quite a bit on the stamp; if the stamp is a low denomination one has to use more than one stamp

Peter

By block of four I assume you mean to exclude plate blocks. If so, then in my experience I would not think so. I know in my collecting of US airmail FDC's, while I have plate block covers of nearly everything from C7 on (except where the stamp was a coil or booklet issue, in which I then look for line pairs or booklet pages), a block of four is a step child to a plate block. It has no attraction on its own.

But maybe others see it differently.

I've had a few of these for 56 years, and I don't remember what was trending back then. None have the plate block number.

Comments welcome.

If you are asking for comments about value, the best I can do is point you to a link of sold FDCs for this stamp on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...H_Complete=1

Without a cachet, I think interest in it would be minimal. I saw some covers without cachets in the sold listings, but they had unofficial cancellations, and so appealed to someone for that reason. But your cover has the official FDOI cancellation.

I have but one:

"I have but one"

And it is a plate block, not just a block of four.

Plate blocks are more sought after.

No plate blocks, but I thought I would share what I had.

I'm not sure why FDC's with blocks of four wouldn't be a legitimate collecting area. I have no problem with FDC's with plate blocks on them, but not being a fan of extra selvage and having no interest in printing numbers I wouldn't collect them even if they are more sought after by some collectors or more valuable. They'd also be more expensive to buy. And of course if a block of four takes up a lot of space on a cover, a plate block takes up even more space and can sometimes interfere with the cachet (not to mention the address if there is one) more than a plain block of four does. Plate blocks themselves were a hot item decades ago, but like FDC's they've cooled off a great deal for various reasons, including that many issues have no plate block -- mini sheets and so on. So plate block collecting and FDC collecting, at least of new ones, seem to be specialties from the past. I still like FDC's and I prefer to have blocks of four on a FDC. They just look better to me. So, yes, I'd call collecting blocks of four on FDC's a perfectly legitimate specialty area. There are a lot of FDC's out there with blocks on them.

When I was collecting FDCs in the mid/late 60s, I would get a block of four and a single for each one.

Can't remember the reason 'why' ... perhaps it was to capture the entire FIRST DAY OF ISSUE killer on the stamps.

They were all self-addressed, and sans cachet, and, therefor, sans resale value.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

As a kid back in the 1960s, I collected FDC's, sometimes with blocks of four, sometimes even with plate blocks. Most were mailed to my home with my address on them, a pretty normal practice back then. In fact, some I sent in myself to the issuing postmaster asking for stamps and a cancellation -- wth my money inside the sending envelope (with my FDC envelope inside, sometimes folded up in order to fit). The coins were scotch taped to a piece of cardboard.

Other FDC's were purchased through different subscription services. Those latter were always "clean" and unaddressed covers, still look wonderful today and, of course are worth more. But the worth of almost all FDC's from the last 50 years is very low, so the premium is not much.

And to me those addressed FDC's even with their lower value are to me more special. After all, they have my name on them and my childhood addresses. And I can remember sending them in and receiving them back weeks later through the mail slot in the door. So they have a very personal value to me. Not all parts of a collection should be judged by resale value. Some of what we collect can be so special that, in a way, it's priceless.

It does look nice when you have a block on the cover.

Drew nailed it: the self-addressed covers were "more ours" than the anonymous, pristine, sterile FDCs.

But this works both ways: I always feel a little funny handling someone else's self-addressed FDCs. They are "private", in a way that ordinary covers (bearing both an address and a return address) are not. Go figure.

Thinking further about the OP, perhaps the difference is that you have to actively look at a single stamp, but blocks of four kinda jump right out at you.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Back in the day, the dealers who serviced first day covers had a demand for plate number blocks on the covers which required buying sheets of the stamps in order to obtain the number of plate blocks required. Obviously, this left them with a fairly large number of stamps which could only be sold as "scrap" at less than face. Promoting blocks of four on the cover helped to reduce this surplus as did promoting "second day covers". These were dubbed "first day of national use" and cancelled at Washington on the day following the first day at another city. Again this absorbed some of the scrap and turned it into a profit, particularly for those dealers located in DC.

Another post, another thing I never heard of ... yea !

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey