| 1917 Transition Period And Combination Covers |  Top |
| Item # |
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US$ | ||
248447 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Transition Period cover: U.S. 1 cent Washington (VF) on THIRD DAY OF AVAILABILITY OF U.S. STAMPS in DWI. Picture post card with dateline of "5 - 4 - 17" (5 April 1917) and message of Easter wishes. The stamp is canceled, very faintly, at ST. THOMAS with "4 ...." still using the DWI style postmark device. It is likely that the new St. Thomas postmaster reversed the day / month numerals in the postmark device since U.S. postmarks use month / day, thus the first numeral would be a 4. The card was sent to CHRISTIANSTED and there was struck with a very clear "7 / 4 / 1917" DWI-style receiving postmark (I think the Danish postmaster was still on duty in Christiansted in these very early days of the transition. The U.S. style postmark devices did not come into use for at least a couple of weeks, thus there was a very short period of time when the U.S. stamps had to e canceled by DWI-style postmarks. The first day of use of U.S. stamps was 2 April. Most of the transition-era covers that are seen have a "sexier" combination of U.S. and DWI stamps -- actual "ordinary" uses such as this with only the new U.S. stamps are remarkably scarce in the very early days of the transition. The picture post card is a REAL PHOTO view of St. Thomas with a lot of detail. In the lower right there a couple of workers putting a roof on a building. There is no card publisher information. This particular card may or may not be scarce, but I have not previously encountered it. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in 50 years that I have been able to offer such an "ordinary mail" non-philatelic item, and so early, from the transition period. |
SOLD |