Kansas Nebraska Overprints properly used

Jim Forte's covers arrived in the mail today and I was quite pleased with my purchases. So I headed over to his site and found two postcards from Nebraska with 1 cent overprinted stamps. I bought the one below for $10 and 1.50 shipping



I'm happy to get a postcard for the 1 cent stamp. Now I'll have to wait to see what's on the other side.

8 Down, 14 to go. I've picked up Kansas 1c, 1.5c, 2c, 3c and 5c ; Neb 1c 1.5c and 2c. I'm going to open up the price window to $20 but hope to get the 3c and 5c Nebraska covers for under 10. Interestingly, I have yet to find the 6c, 7c or 10c overprints on cover, from anywhere, let alone Kansas and Nebraska towns, except for FDC's.

I had to do a double take on that postcard - it was sent from Elwood, NE, which is my husband's itty-bitty hometown! (His high school graduating class had 11 people.)

I wish I could make out something about the sender. It looks to be in German?

Because I imagine that to be highly unlikely, I'll take you up on the offer. My hubby gets so annoyed when I see that someone is from Elwood, in the newspaper or similar, and then ask him if he knows that person.

Okay, this one has me stumped. I don't know too much about RPO covers, or their routes, but I figure that any cover traveling from Kansas City, Mo to Kentucky would not be sent anywhere near Alaska. (Today, with airplanes, one can never tell.) I assume the Seward and Unalaska markings indicates the train at least started somewhere in the frozen north. Perhaps it was on its way to Miami, or someplace warm on the East side of the Mississippi River and just happened to be passing through Kansas City when the postmaster there was looking for a train to carry his mailbags on their way. Given the return address and the destination, I don't suspect this cover was ever in the state of Kansas on its trip so it's not going in my collection, in any case.



Anyone have any help with this one?

Well, I got outbid on the Alaska cover. That's fine since it did not fit into my collecting ground rules. I tried to snipe it on EBAY but there were two other snipers with me and my bid didn't even register. Another case of no activity for most of the sale and a flurry in the last few seconds. If EBAY were a true auction firm, they would keep the bidding open for 1 minute after the last bid. It might be far less popular that way. It definitely favors the buyers. (I'm not complaining. I've won my share of snipe bids, too.)

I found this interesting cover on EBAY tonight and, for $7.50 with shipping, I had to add it to my collection. Another 1 1/2 cent Harding Kansas cover? We already had one. Well, if you look back in this thread, you will notice that Scott 659 was used with a 1/2 Nathan Hale stamp to make up the 2 cent first class rate. This cover is different.



Here the 1 1/2 cent stamp is used all by itself, with no postage due. My quick research indicates that the 1 1/2 cent rate was for 3rd class mail. Well, this appears to be 1st class. Assuming the post office didn't make a mistake, I am guessing that the drop rate for intercity mail applied for this letter and the rate was also 1 1/2 cents. I'll have to find a copy of the Postal Guide for the late 20's or early 30's to confirm this. Many versions of the Postal Guide are available, in full text, on Google books.

Ryan, The EBAY seller, james_wear, has a second cover for sale with the 1 1/2 cent stamp alone. The cover appeared to be down on the left side, so I did not buy it, despite the low price. The cover is also an intercity mailing from Parsons, Kansas and the cds is dated Dec 21, 1932. That also fits in with your hypothesis that this was a Christmas card mailing.



On closer examination, this may not be a cut down cover at all. It may just be an odd shape (ie., a Christmas card envelope.)

That may also explain the textured envelope on the one I bought.

According to the 1898 Postal Guide (the latest one on Google with complete text as an ebook)

"General Regulations and Suggestions respecting Foreign Mails for Parcels-Post Regulations.
27. Valentines, unframed Christmas and Easter cards, and other cards of a similar character, passing between friends in small quantities as tokens of esteem, are transmissible in mails dispatched to countries of the Universal Postal Union (except Canada and Mexico, for which US domestic rates apply), at the rate and under the condition applied to 'printed matter'... "

So Christmas cards were rated as 3rd class printed matter internationally, and the domestic regulations probably applied in the same manner; hence the 1 1/2 cent rate.

mark

This one got me excited until I realized it was sent from Florida to Oklahoma. I'm not sure why the 15c postage due. Perhaps the clerk thought the stamps weren't valid for postage outside of Kansas. Assuming it was sent airmail, it was still a 1 cent overpayment. The combination with the postage due stamps makes this a great cover.



Only a 9.99 starting bid on EBAY. I may buy it anyway; just not for this collection.

Steve, Very interesting. So all those FDCs from Kansas & Nebraska are bogus. Seeing how well the various postmasters followed these guidelines from Washington, I'm surprised there's not a vast variety of pre-cancelled overprinted stamps. Has anyone seen one, on or off cover? If so, please post it.

I don't think you can safely draw that conclusion.

From my interpretation of the guidance, covers wouldn't be accepted for stamping and mailing by philatelic agency personnel; however, I'm assuming that stamps purchased and placed by collectors/dealers on May 1, 1929 were laccepted for cancellation by the agency.

Steve, Here is why I made that conclusion:

1. The "Agency" referred to is the Washington DC office that traditionally cancelled first day covers.

2. Item 2 states that " no official first day of sale will be designated for any post office supplied with the surcharged stamps"  Thus, the May 1st mailing within the states of Kansas and Nebraska were not FDCs.  At best, the April 15 covers were EKU's.

3. Item 4 says the stamps will be sold by the Agency for stamp collectors on May 1st but the agency will not accept collector's FD covers for stamping and mailing.  This seems to imply that they would accept stamped covers for mailing on May 1 if, and only if, the covers were pre-stamped (or the memo would have said "stamping or mailing".). 

While this is in complete agreement with what you said, it is also in agreement with what I said.  The Washington DC covers cancelled on May 1st were the only official FDCs.  The ones from Kansas and Nebraska were not.  And the April 15 covers from Kansas & Nebraska were EKU's.

Of course, collectors are free to collect what they want and pay what they want.  And if they want to pay 1000-2000 for a set of May 1, 1929 covers from Kansas or Nebraska, then God bless them.

mark

Query :
Is anyone conversant with William Steiner Pages? His pages list by Sc Number
and I was wondering if he has these Nebr. Opts on Page.
I looked for Sc669 onwards, but couldn't find them.
Thanks.

Lifetime supporter, It might be a possible interpretation of the memo, at least by FDC collectors (since the Scott catalog recognizes May 1, 1929 as the official date from any post office in the state) but there is certainly some doubt to this. Item 2 states "No official first date of sale will be designated for any post office supplied with the surcharged stamps."

For your interpretation, I would have stated the sentence as "No post office will be designated as the site of the official first date of sale" but this is based on how we tend to phrase things today. One would have to look at other memoranda of the times to best interpret what the PO department meant back in 1929. The subject of the Post Office's sentence seems to be the first date of sale and not the location.

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I was able to pick up that double 8 cent franked postage due cover for the starting bid of 9.99. I'll present the cover as "confusion by other post offices as to whether the overprinted stamps were valid for use in other states." Since the origin was not Kansas, it doesn't count in my tally, whic remains at 10 out of 22.

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The German postcard arrived. It is a very nice Easter greeting card, which I will post in about a week [I'm having hardware problems with my XP desktop so I'm replacing it with a new Windows 7 desktop and it will take some time to get my software & files transferred to the new unit. My laptop does not have the capability of running my printer/scanner or photo tools.]

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A few more 2 cent regular postage Kansas covers showed up on ebay but nothing too exciting, except for a nice advertising cover at 24.95.