Odd Pm On This First Day Cover

The appropriate origination PM for this Oregon Territory FDC ( Scott 783), Astoria, Oregon, is placed on top of a Waverly, Iowa PM. Waverly is the city of the addressee. There are no PMs on the back of the envelope. Can someone explain the preparation process that led to this. The forwarding also seems odd for an FDC.

Mailed in Astoria, OR on July 14 to Waverly, IA where it was received by the seminary which corrected the address and returned it to the PO. The Waverly PO cancelled the letter to document when they got it back and before being forwarded on July 20 to Brainerd, MN. (If it had stayed in the Waverly PO, they would have corrected the address immediately and sent in onward much faster - like about June 17.)

The recipient probably had a standing order for FDCs through a service provider (likely the chachet-maker) and sent to his school address, was home for the summer, and the seminary forwarded his mail.

Thanks, John, but, if you look closely, the Astoria PM is on top of the Waverly PM.

Check the postmark dates, the Astoria was done first, consistent with the forwarding chronology of the addressing.

Makes it a much nicer FDC then usual, at least from a collecting standpoint.

Oops! Of course, you are right John.

I think there are two cachets for this fdc....

There are undoubtedly more than 100 cachets for this issue, or any other issue in this era for that matter. A quick search on ebay gets over 500 hits for 783 FDCs, although many are duplicates. These are applied by numerous private companies and collectors in advance of the first day of issue. Yes, you have two very similar variants in your most recent post.

The Scott Specialized catalog lists 5 official first day cities on July14:
Astoria, OR
Daniel, WY
Lewiston, ID
Missoula, MT, and
Walla Walla, WA
with release in Washington, DC the next day, July 15.

That will be a lot to collect.

When I first saw these two cachets, I thought one was an error.....no black ink....that may not be the case I guess. Im not into fdc's that much...