Postmaster Signature On A C-19 Cover

Any thoughts on why this air mail cover would have a postmaster signature on it?



Perhaps it is related to this New Jersey First Flight cover of the same date? They have the same addressee.

The simple answer would be, because the addressee requested it.

Collecting by postmark/location used to be much more popular than it is now. Postmasters were more than happy to provide such service to collectors.

John

Thanks, John. For my understanding, the request and this franked (or unfranked?) envelope would be mailed in a larger envelope to the postmaster?

Yes, indeed.

John

Not necessarily. It is more likely it was mailed. A cancelled cover has more interest than if a slip of paper was sent with a return envelope for the autograph. And collecting autographs was popular back in the day.

A fair number of event covers of the time will be autographed, sometimes down to anyone vaguely official autographing a cover. One of the great frauds are genuine legal-size first airmail flight covers with the autographs of major celebrities of the time. But all the autographs were forged (they forgot Lincoln) on a cover that would be otherwise valuable today. An example of one of these was once framed on the wall of the Stampazine store in Manhattan.

The U.S. Post Office pulled a very successful publicity stunt from November 15 - 20, 1937 by designating it as "National Air Mail Week". The made a strong effort to increase the use of air mail by requiring every postmaster in the country, (whether there was a local airport or not) to create a publicity event for this week and a large part of it was to get every post office to postmark covers during that week. Most post offices followed their instructions to create or have someone else create special National Air Mail Week cachets to entice collectors to send covers by air mail from their local towns. The Trenton cover is an example where Eastern Airlines eagerly created and provided a cachet since they, along with the other airlines, derived a large part of their revenue from being paid by the US Post Office to carry air mail on their regular flights. The cost of a regular letter was 3 cents, but air mail service cost an additional 3 cents, part of which went to the airlines for their carrying it. Larger towns that had airports, and especially towns and cities that were stops on official contract air mail routes often were able to have local fairs and carnivals and parades and similar events at their airports, many of which featured special flights and acrobatics and fair food to make it a big party atmosphere. Collectors and even non-collectors responded avidly to make collect National Air Mail Week covers. More enterprising collectors made the effort to have the local postmaster autograph their covers, and often also had any local VIP who was around to sign also - such as the mayor. When there were local special flights made they also tried to get the pilots to autograph these covers. The result is today there is an unknown number of National Air Mail Week cover locations but it is in the thousands of towns. The result of NAMW is that it was one of the most clever and successful publicity promotions the US Post Office has ever had and it greatly boosted the use of air mail.

These kinds of covers are not considered to be first flights, but rather simple event covers. There are collectors of NAMW covers today but the typical cover tends to sell in the 25 cents to 50 cents range. Pilot autographs if they are from famous pilots add several dollars. Postmaster, mayor and similar local VIP autographs tend to add a few cents to nothing. Since these are so common, inexpensive, and plentiful, and there are so many different ones a person could have a lot of fun at very low cost collecting them.

I have no idea why National Airmail Week cover are so inexpensive...
(Farley sitting among just some of the submitted National Airmail Week covers)


I have been helping with a large National Airmail Week project for the last year or two and have had an opportunity to learn quite a bit on the history of Airmail Weeks. The project will be published on Stamp Smarter in the future.

The 1937 and 1938 Airmail Weeks are what most folks think of with this topic but my research has uncovered the phrase 'National Air Mail Week' (NAMW) going back all the way to the 1923-5 time period. These events were not really nation-wide but rather promoted by local flying clubs, notably cities like in Cleveland and Salt Lake City. The phrase is found being used by reporters who may have been trying to sell newspapers; in other words a bit of marketing hype of a local event.

But to Kimo's point, even back then the USPOD was actively trying to promote airmail services and was supporting these local events. Even the 1937 NAMW was more of a loosely organized State-level affair then a nation-wide event all being held on during the same week. It was in 1938 that it truly became a nation-wide event all being held on the same week of the year.
Don

If anyone knows where one can find 1938 National Air Mail Week covers for 25 to 50 cents, let me know. Those from smaller towns are easily 10x that much or more.

Yesterday one sold for north of $80 on ebay.

A friend who collects them and has thousands tells me the average price is $2-$5. Beyond that, as John mentioned, certain states and towns command more.

The project we are working on already has 50,000+ covers with many more to go.
Don

I just went on ebay to search for sold covers using "1938 National Air Mail Week" as the search phrase. I got 306 hits. Four sold for $0.50 (plus shipping). Another 5 sold from $0.81 to $0.99 (plus shipping). The median, including shipping, looks to be between $9.25 and $9.50. Examples of sales close to the median include $9.50 (free shipping), $4.00 (+$5.00 shipping), $7.89 (+$1.25 shipping), $4.12 (+$5.00 shipping) and $8.50 (+$1.00 shipping).

Sorry, John, I tried to find more at 25 to 50 cents each, but they were not to be found.

Basil

I was talking about prices in large lots.

The Trenton cover shown above that says it is the first all New Jersey Air Mail is a bit of boosterism in that there were not many cities in New Jersey that had airports being serviced by commercial air mail contractors. There were some hopeful visionaries who were pushing the idea, but the reality was for the most part is because New Jersey is so small it was faster to move mail between New Jersey towns and cities by truck rather than by aircraft. A good example is the Clemonton, N.J. cover. There was and still is not an airport in Clemonton. There is a small private airstrip in over in Berlin that was not being commercially serviced so the nearest airport where a letter could be put onto a mail carrying aircraft was Philadephia which is 19 miles away. Trying to keep it in New Jersey would require it to be trucked to Trenton which is 30 miles away. The value for most air mail in New Jersey was for mail being sent to other states and countries. Otherwise the time it would take to truck a letter to an air mail serving airport, plus the time it would wait to be put onto an aircraft going to another air mail serving airport, plus the flight time in a propeller powered aircraft, plus the time it would take to be sorted at the receiving airport, plus the time it would take to be trucked to the receiving town, would in most cases take longer than directly trucking it.