Question(s) About Collecting Covers

Well, I would like to contest that cover is equivalent to envelope. A shipping label on a parcel is most unlikely to be an envelope, but functions just like the outside of an envelope, and bears the kind of philatelic elements that we collectors long for. Example: my fox (addressed) 'cover':



(The post office staff ignored to cancel the stamps on the day of shipment. I am going to send this piece to Fox Valley to get a matching cancellation.)

Is there a philatelic society / association whose authority most collectors agree upon to whom we can suggest a bit of terminology clean up? Being mathematically trained, it really vexes me (though only mildly) that I have to use poorly defined terms.

I was quite rigorous in defining different types of covers for my works. (Note: in mathematics, there is another type of number in this family called 'almost-perfect number'. I find the name can be too easily confused with 'quasi-perfect number', so I didn't include it in my classification.)

By the way, I didn't know DANCE is considered an abstract concept! (Again, I am mathematically trained, LOL.)

When defining the word 'Cover', SG wrote .......... "Envelope or wrapper for letters and packets etc. " So perhaps suggesting that - like the original Mulready postal stationary - it 'covered' the contents since it folded over the writing. I don't see anything wrong with using the word 'Cover', in the sense that we do for philately - FDC for example - it seems an adequate word for the use we employ it. Once we start picking at words we end up knee deep in semantics. We borrow from history so many words and in the end forget their origin - look at our multifarious use of the word 'gadget', taken from the C19 glass trade.

'I see nobody on the road,' said Alice ............. 'I only wish I had such eyes,' The King remarked in a fretful tone. 'To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! ;-);-)

So perhaps we shall leave cover to stand as is.

Like a bed slipcover; Linn's Stamp News says that the whole bag or box is a cover (of the contents).

A lid is a ~flat cover.
A car (slip)case, that covers it almost completely, is a cover that takes the shape of the car. It "envelopes" it almost completely.

Per Linn's, the box is a cover, too, postally-speaking.
I say it's a mailing box. Best description.

The second image shows the front cover/half of a mailing envelope, or a cut-out from the "paper wrapping over a box".
Such a cut-out can be considered a de facto shipping label, having the proper info.

If you postcardize it by cutting it to some postcard size, then you can view it as a custom cover (à la scrapbooking), again per Linn's all-encompassing definition.

Linda - the covers of a book do, generally, cover most of the book - just leaving the edges uncovered. The alternative name for book covers is 'boards' - since the decorative material does in fact cover stiff boards - in the medieval and late medieval (European) periods, these boards would have been made from wood.
You can of course use whatever descriptive term you find most suitable - it's just that when we depart from standard descriptions we might then need explain a bit more what we mean.

A book cover (front, spine, back) is a dust cover/jacket and it's never supposed to totally contain the pages.
Only a box or a bag can totally contain a book.

Then you have a cut-out from the paper wrap.
A postcardized item can be viewed as a custom cover, as you like it.
Linn's said a postcard can be a cover.

Be careful with the copyright for any image uploaded.
Don't be upset if your well-intended entries and edits will be rejected or re-edited multiple times.

Reaching consensus is an ambitious endeavour in a chaotic world.

The English language does not distinguish properly the meanings of the word stamp, for example.
It could mean postage stamp, or it could mean rubberstamp, etc.

(Admin -- I don't know where I should post this question ... Since the whole discussion has been moved here, I will continue here.)

I have a question about cover collecting. In the case of the cover being a mailing box or tube, does any collector collect the WHOLE box/tube? Or just part of it (that contains the essential elements)?

I find it strange that anyone should like to keep the WHOLE thing as it takes a lots of space.

In my case, I normally only keep the part of the box that has writing / drawing plus other pieces of information relative to the shipment. For examples:

Shipping label + (printed) postage stamp + Canada Post's 'heavy warning sticker' (this last item is quite hilarious when I saw it for the first time)


My friend's writing on part of the parcel:


My friend's drawing on the wrapping of a mailing box:


The irregular-shaped mailing box shown in the previous post is the only cover in the form of a mailing box that I have kept in its entirety over the years.

Linda , you now have a thread solely related to questions about covers and how they are collected.

I have a box or more of covers, some are interesting but others are unremarkable. I am trying to determine whether to save the entire cover, just the part with the stamp and the cancel or just soak the stamp off of the envelope.

What kind of criteria do others use the decide whether the save the entire envelope of just soak the stamp off?

Thanks!

mberry

In my case it would depend on what I want to keep as personal souvenir or collectible.

Usually friends' and acquaintances' hand-inscribed regular-sized envelopes are kept in their entirety, because I want to preserve the hand-writing. 

But if I judge that the cover takes considerable storage space -- such as a bubbled envelope or a mailing box/tube -- I would only keep the part/side that has hand-writing and/or other philatelic elements, like I stated in this post.

When it comes to strangers' mails, I tend to cut off the stamp(s) and soak them to keep the used stamp(s) that I can hand out to other collectors, even though the inscription on the cover may be hand-written, unless the sender is of some sort of significance to me. For instance, I once purchased something from Darren Alff (aka the Bicycle Touring Pro) who hand-wrote the shipping label fixed on the mailing box to me. I have kept his hand-writing part.

I don't usually keep machine-typed cover unless it's sent from a notable source like Buckingham Palace (from which I never received anything). A lot of those machine-typed covers are not paired with traditional postage stamps, so I don't even bother to collect them; just discard them properly.