I Wonder How Prolific This Sender Was.

Sometimes it's not until you see items in the aggregate that you see patterns or you start to ask questions. That's why in certain collecting areas, I try to get as many examples as I can, because taken individually, there isn't anything notable.

In this case, I was filing an improper-use cover, and it looked familiar to me. It turns out that I have three examples all mailed on the same day (October 8, 1898), written in the same hand. These are all presumably philatelic.

They make me wonder how many covers this person sent out, as the three examples all come from completely different sources, acquired over an 8-year period, one in 2016, one in 2019, and one in 2024.

Since the addressees are all different, possibly someone fulfilling the wants of a collector group? There's no sender identification, so we don't know if the party was a stamp dealer or not.

The first obvious thought is that they were members of the same stamp club. Possibly one was sent to everyone who was a member.

Someone always loves to be the trouble maker...he must have also had a friend at the P.O.

Still on topic, I have a few pieces of mail that have also been reunited after many years, coming from a serial source.





They both originate on the same cruise ship and bear Aug 13 1934, and 13 Aug 1934, but they are printed in a different coloured ink and sent to different parts of the US. Probably along with a few 100 or few 1000 others that day. Still, tin can mail was pretty cool. I have other paired examples just like this for Jul 21 1936, etc. One more interesting fact, where it says 'CANOE MAIL' to the left, sometime in 1934 or 1935 someone took a knife and cut 'CANOE' off the rubber stamp for good. Maybe the canoe part was killing the romance of it all.

> They make me wonder how many covers this person sent out

It was once believed that there were 25 "R154 block" covers taken from one pane, but the latest census contains 27 addresses, plus you have two yet-unlisted in the census. Your "John Lyster" is #12 in the census.

This information comes from an article about R154 oddities in the July-September 2024 issue (volume 216) of "The EFO Collector" magazine of the EFO Collectors Club (www.efocc.org).

The article doesn't detail who curated the census but I expect David Hunt the co-author of the article (along with Len McMaster) may have more information and would be interested in learning of your two additional names. I don't want to post David's email address here but I was able to find it via Google (he is Treasurer of the EFOCC).



Update: Side note, some of the other R154 EFOs pictured in the article can be found in Len McMaster's single-frame vermeil-winning exhibit from Balpex 2010 https://1898revenues.blogspot.com/2...exhibit.html

Wow, I had no idea there was a census of these covers... nor would I have thought that "The EFO Collector" magazine would be its home. I don't see the connection, personally.

Thanks.

Seeing 6 Philadelphia covers here, *none* marked by due as they were supposedly handled by various clerks and carriers points strongly to a hand-back event involving the cooperation of a single clerk. Not a single one shown seems to have any post-mailing handling evidence. Do any of these have backstamps of stations/branches?

Plus all the duplex cancels are essentially in the same location.

I haven't posted here in awhile ... but my study of the R153 and R154 postal use appeared in the Sep-Oct 2007 issue of The American Revenuer. At the time I was only aware of 19 covers, but with the addition of the two new (to me) shown here, the total is now 29 including one block on piece. The covers are believed to have been sent by T.F Nealis, an insurance and real estate agent, working/living in a Philadelphia neighborhood and he sent them to his family and friends in the neighborhood. Some of this information appeared recently in The EFO Collector as the result of communication with David (an old friend) about the broken letters on the "I.R." overprints (and other oddities) being considered EFOs ...

Hi Len,
Thanks for posting and pointing out your article in The American Revenuer. I enjoyed learning how the identity of the presumed sender was discovered (from an earlier single R154 cover with his corner card and identical handwriting as all the R154 block covers).

One of the covers is addressed to George D. Cunliffe. Could George Cunliffe be the father of prominent philatelist Robert H. Cunliffe? According to the 1940 census, George would have been about 3 years old in 1898 when these covers were mailed, and about 30 years old in 1925 when Robert H. Cunliffe was born. Philately passed through the genes. (n.b. the 1940 census lists different middle initials, it says Robert M. Cunliffe is a child in the George T. Cunliffe household in Philadelphia. Could be a different household, or I am guessing penmanship or OCR translation error in the online records).

ref. the Cunliffe addressee ... I don't know if George was Robert's father, but likely a family connection with Robert Cunliffe as Robert's son Frank owns (or used to) the cover addressed to George Cunliffe ... also note that one of the recipients is a Nealis, I assume a family member of the sender.