It's Sift Through Hundreds Of Covers Day

Since it's 90 degrees outside today and the wife has been on me to make some room in our basement office (or as I call it, my stamp room) I decided to go through a big bin of hundreds of covers and pitch the ones with no value. I found this ginormous margin 4th bureau on cover and thought it was neat even though 2 sides are clipped. I'm assuming it was a margin stamp.





Full cover




I'll post some of the ones I'm keeping in a bit.

Not clipped. From the LL corner of a booklet pane, notorious for cutting shifts creating large stamps like this.

Thanks John, makes sense.


After sorting through probably a few hundred covers didn't find anything earth shattering like of course I was hoping. Did find a couple of keepers though.

I think this is a 482 Schermack type III on cover. My Scott specialized shows a CV of $22.50 on cover.









What I'm hoping is a Scott 441 on cover which has a CV of $60.00 on cover

Your 1 cent cover has a paste-up at left. A nice bonus.

John, your eye and knowledge of postal history are impeccable, thanks for taking time to look and provide input. Unfortunately the cover itself has some browning on it. Not sure if it's from improper non archival material it was stored in. When I pulled these covers from the "Family box" I moved them into big manila envelopes and stored them in a rubbermaid container. All in all I had roughly a dozen of these manila envelopes crammed with covers and separated by decades. Still, since the cover is 104 years old I'm not going to lift the stamp.

A couple more I thought worth keeping.


I believe this one was mailed to the Chicago State street address then re-routed to New Haven VT. To me this makes sense since my family did own the property at 1406 N. State street but moved to New Haven. The recipient is my grand mother and my Mother was just a young lass when they moved to New Haven. I think the postage due is the double deficiency fee.






This one I didn't bin because I've never see the auxiliary marking of the 75¼ before and not sure what it means.

I don't know what the 75 1/4 marking is but I doubt that it is postal. Interested to read other thoughts on it. Sounds like you had a good day.

1937 postage due cover: Double due charges do not apply to domestic mail very often - only in special cases. From the 1936 Postal Laws & Regulations volume section 767: "Double rate of postage due shall be charged only on matter reaching its destination with no evidence of any prepayment whatever." Thus your cover is charged straight postage due for its defficiencies. In this case, the local letter rate is 2 cents, when forwarded outside the local area, the rate becomes 3 cents (1 cent of the due amount). Then apparently a double-weight letter (the additional 3 cents due). That's my interpretation. Any others?

Your 1 cent cover looks like it was the top cover tied up in a bundle and resting against the side of a corrugated box for many years.

The 75 1/4 is a carrier route number. Illustrated and discussed in Chapter 44 of Len Piszkiewicz's "Chicago Postal Markings and Postal History". As he notes the fractions come from routes being split over time.

The one-cent paste-up is probably #443. #441 is perf'ed. horizontally.

A fat finger on my end Al. I had the catalog value correct and was looking at the right listing in my catalog. John, great information once again. Seems like picking up a copy of the Chicago postal markings & History might be a good addition since I literally have hundreds of covers from Chicago since my family has been there for over 150 years.

Your analysis of the postage .04¢ postage due is most probably spot on. To add to your theory hare are a couple of other covers that look as if they were forwarded on to New Haven VT. as that cover was and the postage due of .01¢ supports your analysis.

Len's Chicago book is extremely useful for anyone studying US postal history - regardless of the city. Learning about Chicago or Boston or New York postal history will have so much that applies across the country.

Kind of an interesting find. 2 covers from the same hotel, mailed to the same address, both in December and both 2¢ Columbus broken hat varieties. Can't make out the date on the one cover but it looks like December. Too bad the covers are ratty and my grandmother wrote the stamp catalog number in permanent pencil of some kind! Most probably came from the same block of stamps? The centering and margins are identical.