Use resources to help solve puzzling covers
by John Burnett (EEX3)
Originally published in Linns Stamp News
I love to exhibit just for the fun of sharing my material and for the challenge of presenting something that is uniquely mine.
I have a rule that has proven well worth following!
If you are at a dealers booth at a stamp show or bourse and find a reasonably priced cover that has a lot of postal markings, most of which you do not understand or have never seen before, buy that cover!
Do it for the educational enjoyment of trying to figure it out, and the intellectual challenge of locating the references you will need to do so.
Once that totally confusing cover is yours, you will have to try and think about what resources you can call on to decipher the mystery.
First, if you are fortunate you have your philatelic friends. You have your local public library. Over time, if you are wise, you may have built up your own philatelic library and reference materials on your own chosen area of specialization.
You may belong to clubs or societies that maintain useful reference materials. Think about the value of the BNAPS book department and the 40% discount members receive on the purchase of these books.
Foremost among the reference sources is the American Philatelic Research Library in Bellefonte Pennsylvania.
I might also point out that if you can identify the specific reference material and your local library doesn't have it, the libraries usually belong to an interlibrary lending group that can search for your needs that can search for your needs at various libraries around the country, including the APRL.
In a recent search for information I identified a book I needed , my local library didn't have a copy but did find one at the University of Maine, a couple of days later I was perusing the book, neat huh?
Figure 1 shows a Canadian air mail cover I came across some time ago, sent in 1943 from the Foreign Department of Liquid Air Co. in Montreal, Quebec to a branch office in Beirut.
Figure 1 - A 1943 airmail cover from Montreal, Quebec, firm to a Beirut branch office.
I have a small WWII collection and this cover certainly added to the collection. In the beginning I was totally confused by this piece of WWII era mail.
Although the cover is a bit ratty, showing the obvious marks of a lengthy, difficult trip, the cover is a nice showcase for two of Canada's higher value stamps of her 1942 wartime issue. The envelope is franked with a vertical pair of the 20¢ stamp showing the final stages of the construction of a Corvette (#260) and a single 50¢ stamp showing the famous 25-pounder fieldpiece of WWII at the end of the assembly line (261).
The three stamps are tied to the cover by a single pass of a February 27, 1943 roller cancel.
The 90¢ rate these stamps paid was new to me at this time. Also baffling was the matter of how this letter moved through the mails to it's destination at the height of WWII.(It arrived at it's destination about a month before Axis forces were finally driven from North Africa, three months before the Allies invaded Sicily).
Some of the postal markings were confusing, too, including the double ring marking to the left of the stamps that is all in Arabic except for the word "CENSORSHIP" and the purple ink circular Cross of Lorraine "CP/4" hand stamp that is upside down on the front of the cover in Figure 1.
Figure 2 shows the back of the cover, which shows the censors tape on the right, two strikes of an April7, Cairo, Egypt transit date stamp at the top of the flap of the envelope, and a bilingual April 10 Beirut receiving strike in French and Arabic at the bottom left corner.
Figure 2 - The back of the 1943 Canadian air mail cover in figure 1, showing censors tape (right), two Cairo transit markings (top) and a receiving mark from Beirut.
I decided to utilize the knowledge of a dealer by the name of Allan Steinhart, one of the premiere postal history dealers before his untimely death some years ago. Let me emphasize that your dealers are a great resource for information.
Allen was good enough to send me a copy of a 1942 postal pamphlet with some very simple postal rate information. The pamphlet is to be found in the Canadian postal archives by an archivist who researched the information. Today, with the internet we can all research through the archives because most of its data is available online.
The pamphlet showed that the 90¢ rate was for a ½-ounce air mail letter to Syria or Lebanon.
Figure 3 is a map tracing the route of the letter at this time. The letter went through the United States to Miami, Florida, south east to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and then across the Atlantic Ocean to West Africa and onward to Beirut via Egypt.
Figure 3 - A transatlantic map traces the unusual and circuitous wartime airmail route taken by Figure 1 cover from eastern Canada to Beirut in the Middle East.
Allen was able to clarify the postal markings.
The "EXAMINED BY (DB) C 27" tape that seals the left edge of the envelope is a common Canadian censor sealing tape applied after the envelope was opened and its contents examined at the beginning of its journey.
The double ring Arabic "CENSORSHIP" marking in figure 1 is an Egyptian censor marking, and the circular Cross of Lorraine "CP/4" marking is a Free French censor hand stamp.
Finally this letter was mailed February 27 and reached Beirut April 10 - 42 days enroute via airmail! We can readily see that even with the airmail marking and fee, commercial intercontinental mail was anything but speedy during the war.
The meanings of the "12_" hand stamp and the "C61" manuscript marking in figure 1 and the "18" and "07838" hand stamps in figure 2 are still unknown to me. They may well be docketing marks used by the censors to record the envelope and its contents, rather than postal markings.
Always look at any cover you encounter carefully, and remember you have the resources near at hand to help unravel its mysteries.
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