Speical Delivery, Registration, the 10d drab, and use-up time!

My thanks to MC for providing three more images of covers in his collection, each of them with something special about it.

The first is a Special Delivery cover from Ilkeston in Derbyshire to North Ferriby in Yorkshire in 1968.  In those days Special Delivery meant Special - not like today where it combines Registration with a timed next-day delivery service.

According to the Great Britain Philatelic Society website:

"Under this Service Letters and Parcels are forwarded by Mail in the regular course of post to any Express Delivery Office in the Kingdom, and on arrival there are sent out for delivery by Special Messenger."

The term Express being replaced by Special in 1938.

 

The fee for Special Delivery was 3s (shillings), paid here by the pair of 1/6d stamps.   Back in the day, it was quite likely that the first delivery to this company was so early that no special effort was required by the delivery office and this accompanied the first normal delivery.

Postage is paid by the 10d drab/stone definitive, for the fourth step, 6 - 8 ounces.  Unfortunately this is only a part-front, but for very large packets that is often the case.

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Second is a registered airmail cover also using the 10d drab, this time x 3 with additional 9d green & 2d brown definitives.  This makes a total of 3s5d. 

Although this is an airmail envelope, it was not sent by airmail, as RAF Rissington is in Gloucestershire.  I suspect the serviceman sending his insurance premium to Royal Insurance had these envelopes left over from a recent overseas posting and saw no reason not to use them.

The postmark is LITTLE RISSINGTON RAF / CHELTENHAM GLOS although the text is so crammed into the space that if it was incomplete you might read it as 'RAF SO'.  The 1st class letter rate was 5d for the first 4 ounces. and 9d for 4-6 ounces, with the basic registration fee of 3s. Although there were higher registration fees, none would make the rate except the maximum of 3s9d with no postage paid!

UPDATE: oh, the shame of it. No excuse, but it took an American to point out my error (thanks Gary). I mis-read my notes of the fees, and copied that to the total postage.  The postage on this is only 3/5d, so basic letter rate plus basic registration.

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The final cover is registered airmail, this time to Canada, from London.  In fact from Trafalgar Square B.O. in London.  And by the type of envelope I would suggest it was sent by Stanley Gibbons or possibly one of the many other stamp dealers in The Strand area.  The giveaway is the mixed pre- and post-decimal day definitives including the 8d red which was replaced by the blue in January 1969 just six months after it was issued.   The date on this item is January 1972.

There are 10 x 8d red definitives, = 80d = 6/8d = 33½p.  With the 1½p stamp making a total of 35p, this covers the 20p registration fee and 15p postage for the second step 1 ounce rate.

In discussions about whether a cover is commercial or (blatantly) philatelic, this falls between the two.  It is clearly commercial if it is a dealer sending stamps to a customer.  The stamps are 'out of time' in that their usage is three years after they ceased to be sold at the post office.

But a month later they would have been truly 'out of time' and invalidated for postal purposes, so it made sense for the sender to use up what were probably large stocks of a stamp which most collectors at the time already had from when it was first issued.

So it is a mixed franking, commercial, 'just-in-time' cover, and a good example to have in a collection if only to tell the story of how, within weeks, the stamps could not have been used.


There's much more to come, but for now, that's all on the Machin front.

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Common stamps - but what were they used for?

The first set of Machin definitives included an 8d in red (or bright vermillion) issued on 1 July 1968. This was just one of the range from ½d to 1/9d replacing the Wilding definitives started in 1952.

But with the 4d brown difficult to process, that value was changed to red, and the 8d to pale blue (light turquoise-blue) on 6 January 1969.  But was there a specific purpose to this value, both colours of which are not at all uncommon in either mint or used condition?

According to British Postal Rates 1937-2000 (Johnson & Peet) the uses at the time of issue of the 8d red were:

Inland Letter 4 - 6 ounces (until 15 September 1968)
Inland Printed Papers 8 to 10 ounces (until  5 January 1969)
Foreign Printed Papers Surface 8 to 10 ounces (to 31 August 1968)
Foreign Samples Surface 4 to 6 ounces (to 31 August 1968)
Foreign Newspaper airmail Group B destinations ½ to 1 ounce and 2nd class airmail group C up to ½ ounce (both to 5 January 1969)

The specific uses of the 8d pale blue all ran from 6 January 1969 to 14 February 1971:

Inland letter 2nd class 6 to 8 ounces, and printed papers 8 to 10 ounces
Foreign Surface Printed Papers 4 to 6 ounces and Samples 6 to 8 ounces
Foreign Airmail 2nd Newspapers Group B ½ to 1 ounce and 2nd class Group C up to ½ ounce.

So, how how easy is it to find any examples of these uses on full cover or wrapper today?  Well, I would suggest very difficult.  Newspaper wrappers are usually discarded, bulk printed paper envelopes or packaging are rarely 'attractive' (or small) enough for people to have collected in the past, and of course collectors in foreign destinations would (at that time) want the stamps for the collections.

So although the red had been replaced by the time of the use shown here, it is still scarce enough, and attractive enough to be worthy of including in a postal history usage collection.  These two Printed Paper usages from Norwich to Australia, the red on 26 February and the blue on 20 November 1969 sold fifty years later on eBay for AU$65.99 - £35.50 at present.

But I'm not actually certain what postage rate they were paying, given the above tables!

Another aspect of Postal History collecting is the inclusion of at least the name and address of the recipient (and maybe the sender), and sometimes content.  From these pictures we can establish the background of the addressee:

Austine Marshall

Another outstanding lady [amateur radio] operator was Austine Henry (nee Marshall), VK3YL, first licenced in 1930. In many ways, Austine had similarities with Florence. She constructed her own transmitters, for which she won prizes and was a keen operator who was deeply respected by other amateurs.

In 1934 Austine joined the R.A.A.F. Reserve and during WWII, went on to train many operators in Morse code at the WIA during WWII.

Postal History collectors - certainly the purchaser of this pair - should be grateful that Mrs Henry kept the envelopes in which, presumably, she received QSL cards (confirmation of radio contact from other radio amateurs.\

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Postcards are a good source of solo uses.

The postcard pictured was drawn to my attention when it recently sold on online auction site eBay.

The rate to Zone C (which includes Australia) from 3 October 19966 to 15 February 1971 was 10d, so this is a good and not easy to find solo usage of the 10d Machin.  Not easy to find in Britain, but maybe easier in the pacific area?  So how did it fare?

It's not perfect with a few rust spots around the stamp and airmail label, but otherwise quite good for a postcard.  From a starting price of £5, it remained at a low level until a bidder came up and tipped it through to £20-ish.  That bidder seems to have dropped out, being outbid by the early bid of £100.  But even that was not enough as a late (snipe?) bid for £102 won the day.  The seller is located in the UK; bidding is hidden, so we cannot tell where the buyer was.

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Odd-looking postal rates are likely to be right!

Most people can recognise an obviously philatelic cover, with excess postage or out-of-period (albeit valid) usage.  The logical conclusion of this is that most people can also recognise a cover which is properly stamped at a proper rate using stamps available at the time.

Sometimes, however, you find a cover with a postage rate that almost has to be right, because nobody would make it that wrong!

Here are three pieces which I picked up at London's Spring Stampex.  The first is a surface-mail picture postcard from Newquay, Cornwall, to South Carolina on 13 September 1968.  Stamped with a 5d blue Machin definitive (SG 735) it doesn't look odd, because we are used to seeing so many inland letters and cards with this stamp from 1968-71.  But that rate took effect later, from 16 September.

The 5d rate for surface postcards worldwide ran from 3.10.1966 to decimal day (15.2.71).  The Machin stamp was issued on 1.7.1968.  So although the 5d Machin on a postcard in this period is not unusual, it is interesting to see it used before it served the same purpose on inland mail.

The second is a small (125 x 80 mm) unsealed envelope containing a card.  This was sent from Romford, Essex, to South Carolina on 8 November 1983 with 14½p postage paid by a 12½p and 2p Machin definitives.  An unusual rate, but by the unusual combination of stamps, I deduced that it was probably 'right'.  And so it proved.  This is the first step (20 g) Printed Paper Rate for letters worldwide.

Lastly, an airmail letter from Carmarthen to South Carolina on 7 February 1979, prepaid at 18½p.  Now I was used to seeing 10½p, 11½p, 13½p, 19½p and 20½p stamps on postcards - and there are stamps for all of these rates, but not for 18½p - so is it correct?  Again, the answer is yes.   This is the second-step 20 g rate for Zone 2 letters (the first step was 11p).  So although the 13p dog stamp is used on its day of issue, the addition of the 5p and ½p stamps to make up the 18½p rate is perfectly right.

So although it happens to be a first day cover - and indeed it may have been used deliberately on the day of issue - it's a perfectly correct non-philatelic cover.

I think if you went to a dozen dealers looking for these last two, you probably wouldn't find anything at those rates, even with other stamps to make up the rates.

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International mail: solo uses, and high value research.

My latest finds, from the local philatelic society fair included some really nice examples of postal history items which require a bit of digging and delving - to find out whether they are 'right'.

Three letters to Greece
From 26 April 1976 the postage rate for letters to Europe was 10p for 20g, so this letter, without a clear UK postmark (see update below) but with an Athens arrival of 31 May 1977, was correctly prepaid with the standard 10p light orange-brown.

On 13 June 1977 the rate was increased to 10½p.  This letter - with the Athens arrival mark of 4 September 1977 on the reverse, and a violet boxed C85 (or 685) cancelling the stamps - was prepaid with the same 10p stamp and an additional ½p stamp.

My thanks to PA for this additional information, which coincidentally identifies the postmark on the above cover as Reading:

The cancellation is actually 635. These rectangular ‘killers’ were applied to uncancelled stamps in the Reading Foreign Section in the 1970’s. i.e the letter could have been posted from anywhere in the South East. Reading FS was in a separate building from the MLO at that time.

The third one, to the same addressee but from a different sender, uses the shortlived 10½p yellow, issued on 25 February 1976 and replaced on 26 April 1978 with the grey-blue version.  Finding covers to Europe franked with a single stamp for the right rate is not easy and the destination of Greece rather than, say, France or Germany is even better.

The other international cover I bought today is a gem: not pretty, not tidy, but a gem of an exercise in rate research.   This is an airmail insured packet to South Africa, prepaid £3.35 with the use of 3 x decimal £1 stamps, a 20p dull purple, and 3 x 5p pale violet, and clear New Barnet Parcel Post marks dated 23 December 1976.  My initial thought was that insurance must have been expensive, but in fact it is only a low fee.

My source was the website of the Great Britain Philatelic Society (GBPS) which has an excellent series of postage rate tables for inland and overseas mail including 'special services'.   In these tables I found that insurance fee for this date was 65p for up to £175 and 70p for up to £210, so this packet insured for £200 needed the 70p fee.  The balance of £2.65 was obviously the postage, but how is this arrived at?

The airmail small packet rate tables show 130g is 49p, and each additional 10g is 3½p.  3½p doesn't divide evenly into £2.65 (=75.71) so it probably wasn't a small packet, although 130+ (75x10g) 750g is still within the limit of 1kg for a small packet.  Curious.

The GBPS website doesn't include all the parcel post rates - for some periods there were many different rates for the countries around the world and in some periods they changed more than once during the year.  But the site does reference the publication of amendments to the Post Office Overseas Letter Post Scheme in the London Gazette, the official public record for certain legislation, regulation, and official notices, etc.   Here, I found that the rate for an Airmail parcel sent outside Europe varied from £2.20 to £3.60 for the first ½ kg, depending on destination, but the rate for South Africa was... £2.65: the packet was prepaid exactly as it should be, as you would hope for something posted over the Post Office counter!

The clue as to whether it was a Small Packet or Parcel lies in the Barnet parcel post label on the reverse.  A Customs Form would have indicated the weight, but I suspect that was removed on arrival in South Africa, where the white label shown was attached, indicating a fee of 50c for Wharfage.

When the basic inland postage rate was only 8½p for second class, a £1 stamp would almost certainly only have been used on parcels.  To find three on one cover - even a slightly damaged cover - is very pleasing!

(Click on the images to see a larger version.)

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