commercial v philatelic material

[Tony Walker]

Traditionally philatelic covers/cards etc. were considered to be significantly less important/significant/genuine/valuable/displayable (take your pick) than commercially used covers.

It surprises me to see so many philatelic covers shown on the Forum, especially in recent weeks.  Are philatelic covers becoming more respectable?  Maybe they are the only covers available showing a particular cancel or cachet.  If so does that not call in to question the genuineness of the cancel in the first place?  I mean, there are many military covers that are 100% philatelic, produced for the collecting fraternity with a 'contrived' cancellation commemorating an earlier event say.

Certainly genuine commercial covers from Turks and Caicos Islands (military or otherwise) command a premium anything up to 100% or more than the philatelic material of which there is a plentiful supply. 

I have largely avoided philatelic covers in my GB WWI naval collection, not that there is much around as far as I know.  Maybe in this instance a philatelic cover would be MORE valuable as a result!

Something to ponder upon

Tony

[Colin Tabeart]

From memory (utterly unreliable of course) I do not recall seeing any RN philatelic material until WW1, which brought forth the Edgar Weston stuff. Between the wars it started to build up a bit, especially if you count "Navy Days" covers. Post WW2 it went berserk - it is quite difficult to find a non-philatelic cover to or from a submarine. And of course there is all the Patka stuff. Colin

[Michael Dobbs]

Hi Tony

I'm glad Colin responded to your question as it gave me a timely reminder.  With so much going on and so many covers to view and in some cases respond to, your question had slipped my mind.

I think that it is inevitable that in this day and age (and by that I mean gradually from the end of WW2 onwards) that philatelic forces material is much displayed and collected.  We have various collectors to thank for that: Smith, Kennedy, Crabb, Hare, Patka, Knott, Daynes, etc to name but a few.

In addition to which public relations (PR) and philatelic societies formed within military garrisons and RAF stations have taken advantage, in much the same way as Post Office FDCs have done in the civilian world.  They provide an income for forces charities or the local philatelic society concerned.  For those events that use genuine operational datestamps it is a way of obtaining such specimens for ones collection - for me they sit happily besides commercial uses of the same datestamp.

As we get more into the 21st century, obtaining genuine commercially used specimens gets harder and harder until it is almost impossible - email, mobile phones and other electronic media have dealt a devastating blow to commercial material (for both private correspondence and official mail).

For some modern conflicts world-wide the only material seen has been that contrived by collectors - or by units, ships, etc in creating their own illustrated cachets to be applied to collectors mail - it is the only way one can obtain material from many modern conflicts. 

Also I believe military organisations world-wide see such material as good publicity material.  There were philatelically contrived covers in both WW1 and WW2, but not to the extent we now have.  But the whole philatelic world has changed - How often do we deride modern British stamps and say that we never see them used on commercial mail - yet at Stampex there are queues a mile long in front of the Royal Mail counter!

Returning to Forces mail - I used to collect the Forces special event postmarks but gave up a number of years ago.  Such datestamps were sponsored by Forces museums or charities as a means of raising money.  In much the same way as day-to-day datestamps are also used on covers.  Such is the interest that both the Depot and the Directorate in BAOR each had their own philatelic bureau to attend military events to flog covers to the general public - in many cases using datestamps that the next time might be used on an exercise or operation.

As far as I am concerned philatelic material is respectable - so long as it is recognised as such and no attempt is made to pass it off as genuine mail.  I do not believe it calls into question the genuiness of the cancels - in many cases they are genuine, one minute they can be used to cancel a genuine item of postal material and the next a cover that has been philatelically contrived to obtain the genuine postal marking.  In some cases genuine cancels are used purely on philatelic covers for a particular PR event (RE Mobile Display, Aldershot Army Display, a military open day that features a FPO, a Forces Post Office in a war zone cancelling philatelic covers publicising a particular international organisation, etc).

Mike  :)