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(Click picture for a larger view)
It shouldn't have been too much of a hassle, even though there was no grace period then for pictorials, but some over-zealous but not well-informed clerk in St. Louis stopped my package with the FDCs and returned them to me -- a month later! -- because I had used pre-canceled decimal Transportation Series coils. The fact that I had endorsed them with the proper rubber stamps ("First Class Mail / Permit #3") cut no ice with that clerk.
I had to call Cancellation Services, then in Merrifield, Virginia, and ask for help. I got a note to send with my covers to Quincy, and I was told St. Louis would get a dressing down.
You don't have to have artistic talent to make your own FDCs...
The "cachet" on this #10 FDC for the First Flight stamp from the 1900s Celebrate the Century set is the top and bottom of the CTC sheet itself. I've left the illustration large, so you can see the perfs between the two halves, running diagonally from just under "1900s" through the first day cancel.
The new issue of First Days, the official journal of the American First Day Cover Society, has an article by Monte Eiserman on the Will Rogers stamp of 1979.
One of my favorite FDCs is this House of Farnam dual-cancel that I prepared myself -- but tying the two November 1979 issues honoring the two friends who died on a flight within Alaska piloted by Wiley Post was hardly an original idea. The Farnam cachet was made for combining the two issues.
(Click on the picture to see a larger image)
It seems as if every year at the AMERICOVER Cachetmakers Bourse a dealer (often Bob Patkin of Massachusetts) buys out Judith Fogt's stock.
FDCs like this one are a reason.
It's for the 23¢ Lunch Wagon coil, and while I doubt many of the guys I see driving modern lunch wagons look like this chef, you've got to admit it's a fun cachet.
"Don't take any wooden nickels," is the phrase -- but how about wooden first day covers?
The pictured FDC printed on a small, postcard-size piece of balsa wood is one of four designs produced by the Croton River Numismatic Society in Putnam County, New York. They got the idea from the wooden nickels that some coin clubs and dealers like to hand out as advertising.
(Click on the picture for a detailed image)
Putnam County is 40-50 miles north of New York City, on the east side of the Hudson River. The Croton River is a tributary to the Hudson. (Railfans know Croton best for the Croton-Harmon rail yards where passengers trains between the Midwest and NYC would change locomotives. It's located where the Croton River pours into the Hudson).
Sybil Ludington was a teenage female Paul Revere in Putnam County during the Revolutionary War, warning the colonial militia that the British had attacked Danbury, Connecticut.
When roused by the 16-year-old, the militia helped drive the British out of Danbury and back to their ships.
These FDCs are extremely fragile. When I was selling them, I'd lose one every so often to breakage. In my exhibit, another of these cachets is backed by a piece of cardboard in an attempt to prevent having it bent.
CRNS only produced the 4 cachets for the Sybil Ludington stamp, an 8¢ postcard-rate stamp. The other 3 stamps in the Contributors to the Cause series are all 10¢ letter-rate stamps.
Lloyd A. de Vries
©1999 de Vries Philatelic Media