Early 1800's Letters With Cancellation Stamps

I have a number of early 1800's letters where the envelope and letter are formed from a single piece of paper. Some of these have postal cancellations such as the one shown here from August 9, 1827. Would this be classified as a postal cover, and are such covers of interest to collectors?

Yes, they certainly are. You might want to show the inside of this letter ?


Peter

Called a stampless folded letter (SFL) or stampless cover. Depending on rates, locations, and who wrote the letter, can range from a couple of dollars into the hundreds. Yours was sent to a lawyer, so probably not a high value. But keep looking.

Thank you for your comments. Here is the letter itself. Most of the letters I have are between family members. They mostly mention business matters and even though I am a descendent of the addressee they are not as interesting as they might be if they mentioned more about life at the time or historical events.

Boston Stamps

Interesting letter. It appears the sender is trying to sell a debt to the attorney and is willing to accept either cash or tickets for the Vermont Lottery. I didn't know debt buyers existed way back then.

Also, that $1088 noted works out to over $29,700 today per the consumer price index.

The red Boston postmark color indicates to the Newburyport PO that postage was to be collected on delivery. The manuscript "10" (cents) in the corner is the rate at the time for letters going from 30 to 80 miles. That's $27.30 in today's money for a letter traveling less than 50 miles in this case. I think not something they'd spend to just drop a few chatty lines to a friend or relative like in more recent times.

A little Vermont Lottery history;

https://vermonthistory.org/journal/...otteries.pdf

The color of the postmark means nothing as to the paid/unpaid status of domestic stampless letters. The fact that is is not directly marked "paid" means it was sent collect.

I stand corrected again. Thanks.

Before stamps, with a few possible exceptions, postage was paid by the recipient.

i think you meant to write 10 cents 1827 = $2.73 today.