Need Help With An Antique Shop Find

Found this in a stack of old post cards in an antique shop today.
Any info would be appreciated.

I do not know about the card, but my power bill was the same as above, without the dot!

Peter

I note a ux24 I believe, catalogue number on the front upper left. Check it out in the Scott catalogue.

At 12c a kilowatt x 13used = $1.56 in 1914. Being account#46 he was one of the first lucky customers in that town to get power. Obviously just about lived in dark as they only had incandescent power burners in those times.
I pay 17c a kilowatt x 800 average for 2 months + base fee + 15% tax. And I use led's. Ouch!

Yes, UX24 is the Scott Catalogue number, issued August 10, 1911. I don't have a recent U.S. Specialized Catalogue, so I can't give you a current value, but a used UX24 catalogued at 25 cents back in 1991. The fact that it's an electrical bill makes it a considerably more interesting piece of postal history than a run-of-the-mill postcard, I think.

That's cool and interesting. Wish I can find stuff like that locally.

That discoloration/staining on the front upper left area knocks the value down significantly, but since it is only pennies to begin with that does not really mean much. The fun thing is reading the electric bill and rates. And also to wonder at what kind of very limited electric lights or whatever that were in the house that totaled only 13 kilowatt hours for the entire month!

Just thought about your question Kimo. Maybe it was a buisness and did not work after 5pm, or the guy was still using his oil lamps or candles most times.

Mike

One of my favorite (and earliest/oldest) piles is 'pre-printed postal cards used in commerce', mostly unsevered message/reply pairs or just the used reply card.

There are a staggering variety of applications; I've seen farmers reporting both rural electric meter readings and fuel oil levels (eg was it worth sending a tanker to refill the tank), retail stores reporting inventory levels to a shoe factory, etc.

I once thought that it was only the hysteria preference for MNHOG stamps that led these other-than-pristine (read 'adulterated') postal cards to be so cheap.

(In an odd moment, a brick'n'mortar store once refused to let me go through their inventory to buy individual cards because they needed them to bulk-up their bargain lots. Ouch!)

Not long ago, though, I scored an auction lot that included a large pile of pre-printed postal cards sent by FDC servicers to announce their coming covers. That means that many stamp collectors would have been getting these cards for free, month after month and, as they say, familiarity breeds contempt.

More for me!

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Looking from the front of the card, the left 1/4 is absent, cut off to serve as a receipt. Thus its value as a cut-down postal card is minimal (in addition to the stain already mentioned). Its value is now as a piece of local history.

I enjoy finding something like that. Maybe being June helped keep the bill down. No need to spend money on lights when the days are longer. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, WEALTHY, and wise.

US (and many other countries) postal cards back in the day were an extremely common way of communication. Not everyone had telephones; telegrams were costly, and for but a penny it was easy on the pocketbook.

It is very easy to find cards handwritten with the notification of a loved one of the time of arrival by train, often the very next day!

That was in the days of next day, delivery. How times have changed!

I had a collector-friend who had boxes and boxes of early US postal cards similar to the one pictured above; he gave them to me for a few dozen Denmark stamps he needed. The deal of a lifetime, for me, as I find the historical interest of such cards a priceless peek into an interesting bygone era.

For interested posters of this site (minimum 25 posts please) I will gladly send a few of my cards postpaid. I only ask that you "pay it forward" to the next collector/friend you might be able to help. Please send me an email and if you're looking for picture postcards I have many used also, from around a hundred years ago.



--Jim Wentzell
stampguyaps177-681

In late-Victorian central London, there were a dozen deliveries a day - so you could send your card, have it delivered and receive a reply within the same day.

I have a couple of similar cards from 1918-1919 (UX29) in my collection. The missing left portion of the card is the payment coupon, taken by the electric company at the time of remittance, the right side of the card was the customer's receipt. I bought these in a group of 12 old postal cards on e-Bay, for which I paid $9.95.

Although I collect only mint, post office fresh postage stamps, I like the old postal cards used, and do not mind if they are beat-up and dirty. It adds character, after all, they are 95 to 140 years old.

50 posts will be needed for communications.