US Airmail Postcards Anyone?

Add yours please and here are some of my Air Mail Postcards.:



What's the oldest we can post?

Well, here is the first one issued by the US (Sc UXC1) from back in 1949. I'm sure there are many who have them - SCV is less than a buck.

The last one you posted, Jomic, is the UXC4 from 1963 with the 3 printed red "precancel" lines.

Here are the intervening two US issues:
from 1958, UXC2 and from 1960, a UXC3 (which I only have used).

In designing the UXC3 they added a bicolored airmail border to the previous UXC2 card and a vertical line on the front, while removing the slogan. The bi-colored border became pretty much a standard with a few exceptions. And nobody thereafter needed the slogan to tell them it was an "air mail postal card."

Thanks jleb1979 for posting the 1st one issued, as well as the subsequent ones; less than a buck ? Must be a zillion of them out there.

Glad to help out the thread.
There are only 27 major listings for the US airmail postal cards in Scott: UXC 1-25, 27, and 28.
For some reason UXC 26 is unused. Probably has been discussed in the United Postal Stationery Society of which I am not a member.

Yeah, UXC1 is plentiful to this day. Lots of listings on ebay for 'em right now, including a batch of 10 for $5.01 with $0.55 shipping.

UXC26/UPSS SA25 was renumbered by Scott to UX219A because the card had no indication on it that it was for airmail. The UPSS catalog values SA25 at $1.10 mint, $0.50 printed or used domestically and at $15.00 used overseas.

Thanks, Jobi01, for the info on why there is no UXC26 in Scott.
A great illustration again of the value of our forum....

I'll have to get an SA25 and put it in place with a note dissing Scott's lack of a cross-reference or something....

Going back in time ... Here's a portion of page 381 of the 1999 Scott U.S. Specialized catalog when UXC26 was listed among the airmail postal cards


(Moved to the regular postal card section by the 2003 edition. [I don't have the 2000, 2001, or 2002 catalogs])

Thanks, John, for posting that old catalogue page.
I work mainly with a 2014 and there is no mention of the reclassification in either the UX219a entry nor between the UXC25 and 27 entries. Same with the 2020 catalogue I recently borrowed from the library.

Sorry about the lazy group pic. I have a nice handful of blue envelopes too...

On the left side of Casey's post is the gymnast from 1979, UXC18.
I will bracket it with my two favorite airmail post cards.

First, UXC17 from 1978, depicting a Curtiss JN4H a.k.a. "Jenny."
Finally they put an aeroplane on an air mail post card!

Way back in 1978, I regularly drove by a two-story wood frame house, painted sky blue, on the side of which the owners had painted a quite similar, large and realistic biplane in the same attitude as the post card, zooming toward the roadway. Some moxie to have done that.

Second, UXC19, from 1981, showing Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon.

In 1931 they made the first non-stop transpacific flight from Japan to Washington state in the US. Hardly anyone has ever heard of these guys, but they flew 2000 miles further than Lindbergh with slimmer margins for success in terms of fuel capacity and some lapses on Herndon's part. Read about the flight at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Pangborn - lots of dramatic twists and turns. They should be better known.

Here's a better look at these two. They are very clean and fresh.

Here is a scan of the current UX219A which was formerly UXC26 until Scott thought better of its lack of the word airmail or an airplane symbol. Bought it once folks helped me to realize it was, at least for a couple years, an airmail postcard. This completes all of them for me save for errors which I doubt I will collect.



While I'm at it, here are UXC27 (from 1999 depicting Mount Rainer in Washington State) and UXC28 (from 2001 depicting Badlands National Park in South Dakota). These bear small silver airplane symbols to the immediate left of the denomination. These were the last US airmail postcards issued.

Borrowed this one off of ebay:

UXC15