Help Identifying USA Cover

i noticed that postmarke dated 1954

Can you scan, rather than take a picture, of the entire cover, both front and back. This one has some interesting issues ... the least of which is the date.

There are number of philatelic souvenirs from St Louis in the 1950s. Yours is one of them. Here is an image of a similar cover (from eBay), although with modern franking:


Add: Additional St Louis "philatelic" creations from the 1950s (from eBay) to give an idea what they were doing there:

Curious that someone would use those stamps (in the first cover), even in 1954, for a philatelic cover.
Pat

The 1954 Scotts Specialized lists mint #24 at $3.00 each. It may be that these were no gum and/or have small faults.
Don

The cover is a souvenir of the APS Convention, held in St. Louis in 1954. The organizing committee discovered that the old laws pertaining to Steamboat mail were still in effect and arranged for covers to be carried on a Mississippi riverboat. They received the Steamaboat cancel at st. Louis. Note that double the domestic postage was charged. I believe that USN Cdr. Robert W. Murch, a prominent St. Louis collector and APS member was the inspiration for these Riverboat covers.

That was equal to about $33 today, so they would surely have had some defects as mentioned.

Using the 24's may have seemed like a great idea at the time while sitting in the hotel bar.

CV was $3, I am sure that market value was lower and as mentioned I assume that they used "somewhat less than ideal" quality stamps. Granted it was a better cover than what John shows above franked with contemptuous postage, but I would not call it unreasonable nor unlikely that it was done. Going to the trouble of having it carried on a riverboat and having auxiliary marks, it seems reasonable to me that the organizers would be likely make some 'extra special' covers.

The question in my mind is; is it worth more than a lunch meal today? Interesting item but I would not pay much for it.
Don

The stamps on the OP cover were ones in use during original steamboat service. However, if you want to get technical on a philatelic cover, the stamps in the OP were invalidated at the time of the US Civil War and should not have been accepted for cancellation.

In a similar vein, I recall a show cancel showing (I think) the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A collector used a $2 Trans-Mississippi Eads Bridge on cover to go along with the bridge topic. Some people will go to great lengths to make a unique item for themselves.

People do things on a whim without regard to value. A friend put an unused Scott 122 (faulty, w/o gum) on a cover to send to Elliot Coulter (major collector of 1869 postal history) so that he would have 90¢ 1869 on cover. At that time the only recorded cover (called the Ice House cover) was still missing in action after being stolen from J. David Baker.

For those not familiar with steamboats on the Mississippi River, there are still a few of them left that are used for tourists who want to cruise on an old-time paddlewheel steamboat as were used in the 1800s. I do not know whether they offer any kind of philatelic souvenirs, but if not an enterprising stamp collector could easily make up a nice cachet and make steamboat covers today.