Scott Catalog And Airmail Cover

Okay, I am back. I appreciate all of the help here, in my looking for information thread, and the smack upside my head regarding the correct year of mailing was 1993 not 1999.

I did go get my B&W International rate 1872-1996 book now that my question was within the time frame....

Yes Recorded Delivery was for International mail only and began 1-1-1991 with a fee of 85 cents. That fee was raised to $1.00 beginning 2-3-1991. It was raised to $1.10 on 1-1-1995.




This is true in my quoted comment but in this case the letter was only 1/2 ounce or less with the airmail postage being 50 cents and the Recorded Delivery fee being $1.00 for a total of $1.50 which is total of stamps affixed to the envelope.




There are other ways to tell this is a tough item. The two illustrations Tony used in the book are as philatelic as the day is long. Both are a 40 cent international rate airmail postal card, the first with a $1.00 Seaplane coil paying the RD fee and the second with two copies of the $1.00 Seaplane, one for the RD fee and the second for the $1.00 Return Receipt Fee. One sent by a long time dealer and the second by a long time philatelist with both going to the dealers son living abroad.

I went back on ebay there was no other currently listed nor completed in the last 90 days US originating RD examples. Other countries had RD and such covers were listed, one from 1961. Thus the only three I can verify are all from during the second rate period lasting years. So it seems recorded delivery has been tough to find.

A modern rarity in the truest philatelic sense of the word would be a Recorded Delivery item for the, first, 85 cent fee period, which lasted only 33 days. The only shorter rate period I know of in US rates is the 31 day, 5 cent penalty fee on domestic postage due matter during July 1958 (so called Plus a Nickle Rate) .

Parcelpostguy:

Your cover is philatelically inspired.

I found the following cover in the Richard Frajola Philamercury cover census.
https://www.philamercury.com/covers.php?id=29523



It is sent to the same individual in England as your cover, and the return address on the back is the same as on your cover, although the name is omitted. The date is illegible (other than the 1993), but the rate is again $1.50.

I have copied and displayed your cover here to save folks from have to run back and forth to where you posted it originally.



Brad Arch is a well known postal historian who specializes in New Jersey postal history along with many other things. Over the past year or so, I have seen probably 20 or 30 philatelic covers he has prepared offered on ebay, almost all registered and most with one or more of the dollar value Columbians from the 1992 re-issue.

Back when ebay allowed you to create multiple watch lists, and retain the covers for more than a month or so, I had a group of them archived. Right now, I cannot find any on ebay, but when one shows up, I'll try to remember to "harvest" it and post it here.

But regardless of the cover being philatelic, I would agree with you that ANY example of RECORDED DELIVERY is going to be difficult to find.

Mike

I mentioned I had not yet googled the addressee or sender yet when I first posted the cover images. I did just now and found: https://njpostalhistory.org/media/a...ar93njph.pdf which on page 49 has three Colombian Reissues on Recorded Delivery items, including the one you posted above. While I pulled this up by the addressee's name it is a Postal History of New Jersey publication.

So now the count of imaged items is up to 6 of which five are philatelicly related and one is purely philatelic having a convenience overpayment of 27 cents.

---------




I went back to determine how I found this item on ebay as I didn't search for Recorded Delivery. Turns out the seller had the word "Registered" in the title description, a term I search, as well as "Recorded Delivery," a term I did not search then.

That is the important part of the ebay game; inclusive titles to get the widest visibility, picking several categories to best place the item for the most views is the seller's game. My, the buyer's, is to use search terms and categories to find the good dealer listing AND listings in which the seller made a list error. I find important to me stuff with listing errors and that often means getting a great deal on an item because my competition could not find it. I do do description searches at times, but they can produce a lot of useless listings. Search "priority" in stamps, get 2800+ listings; search again with "include descriptions" box ticked and get 480,000+ returns. The difference is mostly sellers stating the can ship with "Priority Mail."

Absolutely. I am new to stamp collecting, and in addition to my initial interest in parcel post and postage due, I find great interest lately in postal history, when viewing the covers many have posted here that they have in their collections. I have been searching ebay almost daily the last week or so, looking through 100's and 100's of covers trying to find certain stamps and usages that I am interested in, and I also am finding this to be the case, that you need to include certain words and eliminate others, to narrow things down. As you said, the way you word your search can bring you too many useless listings. You have to find the sweet spot.

I found one of the Brad Arch covers on ebay. Prepared the same date, Jun 10, 1992, as those in the New Jersey Postal History Journal referenced by Parcelpostguy, but a different combination of stamps. Registration number almost sequential to one in the article.

Yes, I have seen these on ebay. The article covered a wide range of re-issue covers, not just the three Recorded Delivery.

Yours above is offered by the same seller as my Recorded Delivery Letter.

[Search note for jmz5723: If you find a seller with one item of interest, search that sellers material specifically to see if there is more.]

As clunky as it may seem, you can scroll through more covers in a few minutes that you can in an hour in person with a dealer. Also the more you scroll, the better you get at seeing things of interest or at least speeding past that which is useless. As I mentioned elsewhere on SCF, I search "parcel" on the entire ebay sight, but what I find every now and then makes the search time scrolling time well spent.

Additionally some sellers do not title describe well at all but have great (to me) cover material. Thus once they are identified, I slog through their new listing every day they post new material.

Here is a test: Go find the Columbian cover mml1942 posted above. it is active on ebay right now. Report back. (This thread alone gives you information to specifically find the item in three specialized search steps which I will list after you find the item.)

Good thing my life doesn't depend on it. I can't find it.

1. Find my Recorded Delivery Item--

Put "Recorded Delivery" in the ebay search bar, select "stamps" from the general categories drop-down and hit search.

Nothing useful will show. Then look to the left side and scroll down until you see the "Show Only" section with boxes for Sold or Completed Listing. Tick the box. (here sold will work because the item sold.) The page will automatically shift to showing sold items. Scroll down until you find my goodie.

2 Determine the seller of my goodie and find that sellers current listings--

In the sold list, click on my Recorded Delivery item.

When you get the listing page for the item, go to "sellers other items" button and click on it.

3 Search sellers other material--

You now have the seller's list of other items. Sort by newly listed, (hint: select auctions only as it is an auction listing), then scroll down until you find the Columbian item.

Now I will give you a different hint, when I lasted looked the item was priced at $3.33. So instead of sorting the seller's items by Newly listed, sort by price, up or down. Scroll to the $3.33 range and look for it at $3.33 or towards a higher number. This seller lists shipping at a dollar for most items so shipping does not affect the current price sort much if at all.

Edit: Please report back and hopefully you will have found it.

[A comment on search. I always select how I want to search. I never select the ebay search default of "best match" because that does not search for what I want to see. Rather it searches and shows what ebay wants me to see based upon many things including seller status level. Better sellers get more listings higher up in the Best Match for example. It has nothing to do with what I, me, wants to see and as such it is far from giving best matches.] <<<Covered to death in other SCF threads; use search button.

I finally found it, it was still $3.33 with four bids.

I need to change the way I have been searching for items, because I either don't find much of what I'm looking for, or I have too many useless listings to look through, and I know there has to be more out there. Thank you.

Edit: When I try to find covers originating from the U.S. TO foreign destinations, like airmail, registered, I seem to get cover results mostly from foreign countries TO the U.S. instead. For example, I might type in the search box " 1970's airmail cover U.S. to Germany". I get lots of Germany to U.S., but not many the other direction. Could it be that there aren't that many U.S. to Germany covers from the 70's? Or is it that sellers don't list as many post-1970's cover's because they don't think the interest is there for them, kind of like what John Becker was telling me the other day? Or am I going about it the wrong way? How can I modify my search to get ebay to show me more of what I want? Or is it just the way ebay's system chooses to show me what they want, like you were telling me earlier?

Modern covers are not on the market for several reasons. Most are perceived as not being worth the effort for the low value, as you remember me saying before..And most are still held by the recipients and have not entered the secondary market. I have boxes of interesting covers used to send me ebay lots which are now over 20 years old. Many things take a generation or two to become available.

Also bay sellers are often very poor describers. You must be patient and be as creative as they are bad. Many bulk sellers hire non-philatelists to write descriptions. It takes search creativity and patience to wade through hundreds and thousands of listings. Many omit the catalog number or the stamp subject or the destination or the year of use. Few will have any rate information, and it is often incorrect or incomplete. As an example, if you are looking for Liberty series sent from the U.S. to Germany, it will likely take multiple searches focusing on each of facets in the previous sentences. I also have several searches for areas I chase, which specifically include common typographical errors, let's say "Gremany" or "Gernamy". Both bring up several philatelic lots right now. If you expect "perfect" listings then you won't find much.

Two tangential examples: Military covers: Until the last decade or two, covers/letters from Korea and Viet Nam have been harder to find. They were still held by the soldiers who wrote them and their families. As they are passing away, more of this material is hitting the market.
Similarly try to assemble a set of yearbooks for a college or university. Those prior to about 1970 are easy find on the secondary (read that as "estate") market, while those from the past few decades are still held by the alumni and harder to find. It just takes time for these things to become available.

Too many words.

Under stamps do these searches for practice and to see the results:

"incoming airmail" then select United States.

Staying in the United States category, merely change "incoming airmail" to "foreign airmail."

Lastly change the search term to "outgoing airmail" and likely see no returns BUT look at the list of results listed as "results matching fewer words." That area can be helpful or useless but you don't know until you look.

Now pay attention to what covers show and what the titles read. Look for words in common used in the titles. Those become your search terms.

The more you look at covers, the better you will get scanning for what you want to skip and what you want to inspect.

Let me put John Becker's words a different way, even the best searches can only return item sellers have actually listed.

Me, I am searching for two particular items. I have a specific search that captures the name but also my global "parcel" search returns the same items listed differently. If (when) I stumble upon a listing of the items which would not be capture by my current searches, I will find the term to add to my search. If something related to want I am looking for appears, it does so every 5 or 6 months. My most recent search gives two hats, a baseball card, a group of covers for which not word in the listing's title matches my search terms (why??) and an item I made an offer for. When I tick the "include description box and search, I get a sixth listing, a post card.

Sorry, what I am looking for is scarce while quite popular and I will not give competition any help. My first tow were stolen and the one sold by my deceased friend family went at a price that surprised me which is to say, my bid was well passed.

Again there is both a learning curve and an art to successful searching. To quote an Apple ad campaign you need to "Think Different" at times. In Prexie postal history there are some unusual solo denominations which are hard to find and if listed by a Prexie seller cost full boat. But there was one individual who kept showing up with new to the Prexie collectors examples he found on ebay in his searches. What he did after he realized a couple of the denomination were used to mail catalogs was not to look for stamp listing, rather he search for old Sears, Montgomery Wards and other historic catalogs. He would occasionally find some still in their mailing wrapper with Prexie stamp or stamps affixed. The cost of the catalogs with stamps was not even enough to pay sales tax for the item when prices as Prexie postal history and not just an old catalog. Did he scan a lot of listings? Yes. Was it cost effective use of his time? Oh yes.

We need more pictures in this thread .

Here is one more cover showing the rate I mentioned above that I picked up yesterday. Now in addition to showing a wonderfully tough item, I am showing it to give you an idea about searches and why you must slog through many items when searching for certain items.


Here is the ebay title of the listing:


And scans--





For me, I don't care what stamp is used to short pay postage. However being 1958, it is difficult to avoid getting a Liberty Series stamp. Now I had stiff competition from two under-bidders. If I was to guess based upon my knowledge gained elsewhere, one or both were Liberty Collectors or one was a postage due collector. The due collector looking for a post card with attachment making it the letter rate, not post card rate, could easily find this. The plus a nickel people need to again slog through some listing not knowing this would show up.

The gosh awful price I paid was due to the seller listing this with a title some folks found useful. But the title did not mention Liberty, a denomination, Scott number, amount postage due nor the five cent due penalty. So that seller had us all pour over a lengthy return list to find this goodie in our areas of interest. Of the six bidders, two underbidders were within a few dollars of each other the top one increment below me, the second about at 90%. There are times I was the bidder on the item or one of two, the other not serious. One that I missed was purchased by the buyer as the only bidder. The buyer sent me a scan to which I said, what??!!!. I saw that cover! I went back to the listing and noticed I failed to notice the magic July 1958 time period . Just because the search turns up the item, the searcher still needs to recognize at what they are looking.

Rating: 2 cent post and postal card rate paid, attachment voided post/postal card rate classification forcing payment at 3 cent letter rate. Post due 1 cent for the uprating to letter plus the nickel penalty makes a total of 6 cents due. Of the the few dozen plus a nickel covers recorded of which I am aware, no others demonstrate this underlying reason for the initial postage due. The information is in your B&W rate book. Practice finding it.

Yes, I remember you telling me that, and it appears that the confirmation of that lies in the fact that I can't find much of it listed. I had a hard time accepting it at first, I think it was more discouragement than anything, because I envisioned me putting together a nice assortment of interesting modern (post-1950) covers, because the modern ones just interest me more than the seemingly loads of pre-1940 Franklin/Washington covers that are out there that I'm seeing, most of them being pretty ugly in my opinion, dirty, damaged, writing all over them, etc. I do realize though, that I can still work on a nice collection of them, it will likely just take a little longer than I had first believed it would. I think it was you who told me to be patient, lol!




I failed to take this into consideration, but it makes sense.




Ouch!




Yeah, like finding a needle in a haystack. Good luck to me!




Good examples!

Yes, I just started doing that when I found something good!




Yes, I learned about that 5 cent penalty for underpaid domestic mail in July 1958 about a week ago, very interesting! Congratulations on the find! I actually came across one of those exact cards the other day I believe, but the little bag was missing.

Which brings up another question. I also came across a domestic postcard that was cancelled on the first day of a new postcard rate in the 50's or 60's I think. It amazes me that I remembered the date of the rate change from the B&W book, so something clicked in my head when I saw it. It crossed my mind that it might be somewhat collectible?

Edit: The postcard photo that I posted next is the card that I was talking about above, but I failed to remember that it had postage due also, lol. I didn't put it on my watch list, so I had to go find it again. It's still active as an auction.