How Would You Deal With US FDCs Without Their Stirling Silver Proofs?

Trash them ........get them out of your life .

They serve no purpose ......please don't donate them to any stamp charity .....they get enough of that stuff already and yours just fill up their dumpster .

Do you realize there is 80,000 tons of plastic floating in the Ocean It is called THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH , well we also have the MASSIVE PHILATELIC GARBAGE LOTS . It is tons of cardboard boxes that float between Stamp auction firms to collectors back to the stamp auction firms it has been sold and shipped around the country many times .

Trust me as a Philatelic Enviromentist I have received and trashed tons of this stuff , I told this story before on this board ,so I need to tell it to our new readers .

Here is the story ----- I was at a stamp auction at Chicago , David Khols was the auctioneer for Regency Stamps . David has a lot that was placed in his auction by the APS , he was doing this for free for the APS .

The lot got no bids ,so David turn to me sitting there minding my own business , he said "SOLD " for $200.00 to Floortrader , I know what he was doing ,he didn't want to pack it up and ship it back to the APS or haul it back to St. Louis Mo. so I ended up hauling 8 boxes to my truck ,then to my place of business ,I didn't want it at my house . So Sunday night I went thru the boxes and ended up takeing one box of stuff ,the other 7 boxes went into the dumpster .

After retiring to Florida ,I already know if I buy 500 or 600 even 800 pounds of boxes next week at Kelleher that half the material will be in my trash can a week after I receive it ,because I have no interest in recycling trash back to any stamp auction firm ........hey I am a philatelic enviromentalist .

A guy who apparently knows everything about every piece of philatelic material that has ever existed!!

Come on FT, you have to admit that you either also saved anything that you weren't 100% sure of (including cancels, perfs, watermarks, tagging) OR you simply made some significant assumptions.

And I think that while I agree some very experienced people are capable of doing a rough sort for 'trash', many, many others do not and should not throw stuff until the ask (like the OP did) and get good advice.
Don

In my state they recycle paper and cardboard to make new paper and cardboard, to save chopping down new trees and to prevent the paper from filling up the landfill.
Except they don't like glassine window envelopes from junk mail. Those go to the trash. I used to put glassine envelopes and used hinges in the recycling bin but now those go to the trash too.

For your consideration:

After reviewing the thread, imo the best suggestion came from patg23, i.e. cut the UR 2x4 corner keeping all of the date stamp and killer, but excluding the rest.
Why?
The educational value of these items as FDCs has been compromised by the replacement of the cachet with a generic marker for the coin enclosure and the self promotion of the producer in the form of a spurious COA. But the cancel still links them to the first day of issuance, and that has some long term merit overagainst any other kind of used stamp. The supposed COA of the company that prepared these things has no particular relevance for collectors. A 2x4 corner keeps what matters philatelically and dumps the rest.

Irrespective of the experience and preferences of those who buy and sell such things to trash these as utterly useless, I would remind you that we have no crystal ball to see how things are going to shake down even 5 years from now, let alone 50 or 100 years. Fashion is something that comes and goes, and none of us can predict, let alone control, how it will shift. That said, it is almost a matter of definition that the philatelically "important" part of these covers is pretty much confined to the UR 2x4 corner. "Philatelic importance" has a long history of definition and refinement, and deserves respect.

BUT (philatelic importance is only one parameter)

Before you cut up a cover, you might want to make sure (as much as you are able) that there is nothing distinctive about the addressee.

EssayK, thank you. This is the most likely thing I would do. While I appreciate most people's suggestions, I do not like the thought of throwing them out because they are "low-value". As I like to say "one's man's trash is another's treasure".




Yes, I will have to check who this is since I'm not familiar with Connecticut.

I am on the side of getting rid of them. They do not have strong appeal. If I had them they would be stashed away never to be seen again like so many other things.