Here's a cover that contrasts my last post. While a person could fully prepay the postage on a letter to Switzerland from the US in 1866 they could also pay only enough to get it to the border of Switzerland. In that case, the sender could pay 28 cents for a destination in the German Austrian Postal Union via Prussian Closed Mail. The blue box that reads "Aachen Franco" indicates that the letter was received at the Prussian exchange office in Aachen and they considered it paid to a GAPU destination. The second blue box indicates that the letter is only paid to the border. The red crayon 10 stands for 10 Swiss centimes to be collected on delivery.
Sorry for missing a couple of days -
6 December 1917
One of my favorite covers since it's a commercial cover from Reunion to Ste Croix, Switzerkand. where the Decoppet test canceller was used as a receiver. The addressee was in thebusiness of manufacturing record players, and other types of musical hardware products. The company got its start making music boxes !
Well that didn't work - again ...
Sorry for missing a couple of days -
6 December 1917
One of my favorite covers since it's a commercial cover from Reunion to Ste Croix, Switzerkand. where the Decoppet test canceller was used as a receiver. The addressee was in thebusiness of manufacturing record players, and other types of musical hardware products. The company got its start making music boxes !
7 December 1937
The last known use of this Luzern as a forwarding date stamp. One never sees forwarding or receiving date stamps during this period so I'm not sure why this is so marked. The interesting fact is that the previous last known use of this device was in 1926 as a receiver, so it was sitting somewhere for 11 years before it was apparently used again!!!
What a hassle signing in to use ebay chat, Why would anyone use Google, sign in, Apple sign-in or Facebook to use eBay. Talk about creating different passwords for years for security reason , then to just give them all to the Big Three. Not for me thankyou!
Anyway - 8 December 1903
Lausanne to Appenzell using Lausanne razor canceller.
This is a really neat item. There is a note on the back of this package tag that tells the recipient that if the attached key doesn't open the "clothes hamper" that another lady close by should have an extra key. These tags were usually tied to packages or boxes, etc, this was sent first class mail with a key tied to it!
It appears there have been some software changes that have caused a few issues. One of them is having the topic get all of these "Re:Re:..." added to the front. I tried doing a response to the main topic to see if we can clean that up a bit.
Here's a triple weight letter from Belgium to Italy. 1869 year date. The 24/3 helps to confirm the triple rate with the "3" on the denominator. I am not certain yet how the postage was broken down or where the "24," presumed to be centimes, was passed. But, for those who are not familiar with such things, it was a common practice for mail between some countries to include the amount of postage to be passed on to one the following postal agencies.
I really have issues with the software eBay uses for these forums, though the biggest is not being able to click on the forum link and have it take me either to the last message I read in the thread or the first message I haven't read. It keeps track of those for me, so it can highlight threads with unread messages, and there a setting in the profile that is supposed to do what I want, but doesn't. There are currently close to 30 pages in this thread right now (which I think is great!), but I have to start at the first page, then jump to the last page, then work backwards until I see something I have seen before, then read forward... 😞
Now, just to make my rant fit the theme: Cover from a Henderson Motorcycle dealer/distributor in Lourenco Marques to the distributor of parts in NY.
9 December 1912
Business letter from Cham to Luzern.
Canceler was one of a group of about 15 that were build to test the interchangeability of parts which would allow mass production of Decoppet's flexible-head canceller design.
10 December 1884
This ordinary postal card originated at the Yverdon train station and was carried to Geneva, where it received a transit date stamp prior to going by train to Paris, France.
The Geneva date stamp is the interesting aspect of this item. The canceller was manufactured in 1872 for use on outgoing foreign mail which at the time required a "PD" marking when paid to its destination. Swiss post thought it a good idea to save time by incorporating the PD within the date stamp! Once the UPU came into being this PD marking was no longer necessary, so Geneva had the PD in the "sack" excised and continued using this device until about 1886. You can just see two very small remnants of the PD. There were 5 other date stamps in the family and all continued in use once the PD was deleted.
I have never seen another Geneva marking used as a transit date stamp between Switzerland and Paris from this time period. I only wonder why this card had it applied.
