Quantity Of Mail Carried

In looking through the 5th edition of the American Air Mail Catalog, I see that the "Quantity of mail carried" is shown for most entries. It's either listed in pounds or pieces. When pieces are listed, the number is often less than 100. For example, CAM53S6 lists only 20 pieces. Surely there must have been more than 20 pieces of mail carried on that plane. Or am I missing something?

Hi Healthy. No, actually you are reading it correctly - there are many first flight covers that had fewer than 100 covers plus cards actually flown. Typically the famous flights had a great many more, but it is not uncommon to see first flights that had a literal handful of covers flown. I even have some were fewer than 10 pieces of mail were flown. The thing with values, though, is they depend not only on scarcity but also desirability. In theory a first flight that had 5 pieces of mail flown should sell for many thousands of dollars and some do, but there are also some that sell for under $100 or sometimes less. Also, when reading entries that report on the number of pounds flown, you can use a rule of thumb that 1 pound of first flight covers and cards equates to about 35 to 40 covers. So 5 pounds of mail is about 175 to 200 covers and cards, or 100 pounds is about 3,500 to 4,000 pieces of mail - and so on. And the reason why some quanities are reported as pieces of mail flown, others are pounds of mail flown, and yet others have no quantities is these are what the post office records show. The American Air Mail Catalog is reporting on what the official post office records from back in the day actually show.

Thank you Kimo! Your reply beat me to my question, which would have been how many pieces of mail per pound.

Kimo,

Your figures about the number of pieces of mail per pound has me wondering. Are you familiar with the details concerning the mail carried at the Nassau Boulevard Meet in 1911 (Pioneer Flight #3). Without checking my sources for specifics, the AAMS says that over 40,000 pieces of mail were carried during the event. Now these were almost all just postcards, so they'd weight somewhat less than a typical flow cover. Just doing some back of the envelope calculations, say 100 lbs would be 8,000 postcards. That would be at least 500 lbs of mail. Earl Ovington refused to carry more than 15 lbs per flight, and I think fewer than half a dozen flights are actually recorded as having been flown. (There was mail carried in a race on Saturday by several fliers, but it was probably a token amount). In any case, the numbers have just never made sense to me. Even at 20 lbs per flight, there would have to have been more than 25 flights. On a couple of days flights were not made because of the weather. I have the feeling that probably three quarters of the covers that received the special flight marks for that meet were not actually flown, but were carried by mail truck. I've got a couple of these covers in my collection, with dates on which they were supposedly flown, but I honestly think even on those days the volume was just too great and the overflow was trucked, not flown, and there is just no way to be sure which covers were actually flown.

Basil

Hi Basil.

I am not an expert on this flight, but the 6th Edition, Volume 1 of the American Air Mail Catalog has a fair bit of information on this flight. It does not say that "Over 40,000 pieces of mail were carried during the event" but rather says "A total of 43,247 pieces of mail was serviced during the meet". All that means is that amount of cards and covers were canceled at the temporary post office desk set up at the meet. The Catalog listing goes on to list nine varieties of cards and covers within the 43,247 with various notations for some of the varieties as to whether they were flown or not flown but with no numbers of pounds or pieces. I would agree with you that the vast majority of cards and covers (there were both) prepared and cancelled for this event were not flown and not intended to be flown. They would have been dropped in a box at the post office desk for canceling and forwarding through the regular mail to the addressee. Keep in mind that this was in 1911 and there was not much experience or precedent in the post office for providing for flying covers as opposed to just canceling them at an air show so having a souvenir canceled at the temporary post office desk set up at the show was not unusual. I have never seen any numbers on the number of cards and letters that were actually flown, but your estimates on what could have been carried sound reasonable. The more common of the varieties of these cards and covers are not common but then they are not terribly scarce either. Except for a couple of the rarer varieties I think that much of the high catalog value for the rest of these lies more with their being from the earliest days of aviation and airmail and so desirability plays the larger role than scarcity.

Thanks, Kimo,for the reply. Your clarification about serviced vs. flown explains a lot.

Basil

Excellent information. Thanks much.
Because there will always be covers that were thrown out, a fairly low number of pieces flown would translate into even fewer that are actually available.

Yes, with every passing year, some first flight covers are lost due to mishap (a house is flooded or burned down etc., or a collector passes away and his or her family does not understand or appreciate what the collection is and tosses it in the trash, etc. etc.

[quoteYes, with every passing year, some first flight covers are lost due to mishap (a house is flooded or burned down etc., or a collector passes away and his or her family does not understand or appreciate what the collection is and tosses it in the trash, etc. etc.][/quote]

Any idea of the survival rate?

It is guesswork, but my personal thought is that in general for first flight covers it might be somewhere in the broad range of 60 to 80 percent survival, though there would be some exceptions such as the West Indian Aerial Express covers where a great many that were in the possession of Basil Rowe - the owner and principal pilot of the airline who had many thousands of them that were destroyed in a hurricane that hit his home. Also, I think that some of the more well known types of flights such as those flown on Zeppelins may have a higher survival rate since more people knew what they were and valued them more highly than something less well known and valued less highly such as expansions of domestic airmail routes of the late 1920s and 1930s. These are just my observations but they are based on decades of collecting.