By Janet Klug
Collecting old covers – mailed envelopes, postcards and wrappers – is an exciting branch of stamp collecting.
Collecting old covers with stuff in them doubles the pleasure, or maybe it triples the pleasure, depending on the stuff that is included.
Old letters can tell remarkable tales. They can make us laugh or cry, entertain or inform. Some, in fact, were designed specifically to educate.
In the 1930s, a program was developed to use informative letters and their outer coverings to teach social studies to children. It was a brilliantly devised program created by World Letters Inc.
Each week, the subscriber to the program would receive a letter from a travel writer who was touring the world. The letter was engaging and detailed, with information about the places being toured and the people who lived there. The writer might include an object like a leaf, a paper flag or some other small souvenir.
Figure 1 shows a World Letter written March 6, 1940. Sent from Brazil, it includes not only a stamped envelope and postmark, but a four-page letter and a piece of snake skin.
The letter documents travel on a Pan Am clipper airplane and a visit to a rubber plantation to watch the collection of latex. And, of course, it also provides details about acquiring the snake skin.
These letters, with their enclosures and the covers bearing foreign stamps and postmarks, all became treasures to collect. They served to reinforce geographic lessons learned in school. Stamps helped to educate students about faraway places.
Each year a different travel writer provided the text. Imagine how students would look forward to the weekly letter from afar. They would marvel over the stamps and pinpoint the place of origin on the classroom's world map.
A beautiful leather album with a cover skillfully tooled in the Arts and Crafts style could be purchased with a subscription to World Letters. The subscription also included a parchment world map. The album and map, along with a letter from Malaya, are shown in Figure 2.
The classroom teacher would consult the teacher's guide provided with the subscription. The teacher's guide set out the aims of the program: to cultivate world-mindedness in every child, to teach why people are what they are, and to enable children to develop a sympathetic attitude toward foreign problems and customs.
School clubs were encouraged and enhanced with the use of World Letters. The teacher's guide suggested that clubs for travel, stamp collecting, costume making, scrapbooking, letter writing, book reading, dancing, arts and crafts, nature, radio, current events, drama and commerce could spring from using the World Letters.
It sounds very much like programs that exist today that encourage the use of stamps in classrooms.
The World Letters program seems to have died when the United States entered World War II and international travel became impossible. Nevertheless, the covers and their enclosures still exist and can be found on occasion by trolling stamp show dealer boxes.
In the mid-1950s, a new program organized by the American Geographical Society utilized stamplike stickers to support a series of booklets that made social studies fun and tactile.
Subscribers would receive a set of paperbound booklets, each devoted to a single country. The booklets arrived in a pull-drawer cardboard box. The booklets were written by expert geographers and contained maps and black and white illustrations.
Bound within each booklet were full-color gummed stickers that could be moistened and affixed to spaces on the pages designated for each individual label.
It was sort of like stamp collecting, but easier for the publisher to make their own labels rather than try to find appropriate stamps. These booklets can still be found at used book sales and in online auctions.
Now in the 21st century, letter writing might seem like a disappearing form of communication. E-mail runs rampant, but will generations hence be tying love e-mails up with ribbon and cherishing them forever? It seems unlikely. Will blogs written by travelers today still be around 80 years from now? Probably not.
Real mail has a potential for permanence that electronic mail lacks. It is also tactile and memorable – and that is why we collect real mail.
The good news is that there are organizations today that still encourage letter writing.
The Letter Writers Alliance was formed "for those who enjoy letter writing and postal adventures" and is dedicated to preserving the art form. Contact the Letter Writers Alliance by writing to them at Box 221168, Chicago, IL 60622; or visit www.letterwriters.org.
There are also local letter writing clubs that gather once or twice a month to write letters and share letters they have received.
If writing a letter seems a little too onerous, can you pen a couple of sentences on the back of a picture postcard?
Postcrossing is an organization that facilitates friendly exchanges of picture postcards between people all over the world. It costs nothing to join. You will be given an address of someone outside your own country. You send a picture postcard to them. When they report to Postcrossing that they have received your postcard, your name will be sent to someone and they will send you a postcard. The exchange repeats again with new randomly selected names.
You can sign up to participate at www.postcrossing.com. It is fun and you might make some new friends.
blogThis month marks my fifth anniversary writing the monthly auction report for Linn’s Stamp News. That’s 60 columns, totaling more than 100,000 words (enough for a decent-sized novel), all about our favorite hobby. Read More ›
blogIn mid-September I traveled to London, England, to attend Autumn Stampex, one of two British national stamp shows sponsored by the Philatelic Traders’ Society, Great Britain’s national stamp dealers association. The show took place Sept. 16-19 at the Business Design Centre in Islington (central north London), a comfortable and attractive venue for a stamp show. Read More ›
September 28, 2015 03:30 AMAfter the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, postal workers not only saved the mail, they saved the new post office building. Read More ›
blogWe stamp collectors are an observant bunch. After all, we spend a great deal of time closely scrutinizing small, colorful bits of paper. Read More ›
Watch as Linn’s Stamp News associate editor Michael Baadke talks about a record fifth win for wildlife artist Joseph Hautman in the federal duck stamp art contest, and see the painting that will appear on next year’s federal duck stamp
Watch as Scott catalog senior editor Marty Frankevicz questions Bolivia’s choice for the design of a 2013 stamp honoring the country’s efforts to protect its migrants in foreign lands.
Watch as Linn’s Stamp News managing editor Chad Snee discusses the discovery of the upright Jenny Invert pane received in an order from Stamp Fulfillment Services in Kansas City, Mo., and also reports on the Confederate Stamp Alliance.
Watch as Linn’s senior editor Denise McCarty discusses the situation with Canada’s recalled Hoodoo stamp, as well as stamps from the United States and other countries that also depict these rock formations.
It is always a treat to get to see stamp dealers’ own collections.
In the recently concluded Linn’s United States Stamp Popularity Poll, the Circus Posters set of eight stamps was chosen as the overall favorite issue of 2014.
Dispersal of the splendid Daniel B. Curtis collection continued March 25, with Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries gaveling items from United States back-of-the-book and possessions.
The 175th anniversary of the first postage stamp, Great Britain's Penny Black, is May 6, but the stamp was placed on sale May 1, 1840, for mailers to use beginning on May 6, the designated issue date.