On Tuesday April 2nd Banbury Stamp Society welcomed Carlton Jones who gave a presentation of stamps from the USA.
Carlton started the presentation by saying that he didn’t collect the ordinary postage stamps of the USA. What he did show included material many of the members hadn’t seen before. He started with local city mail where private mail carriers set up in business and produced their own stamps. As many of these were locally printed and of poor quality, it is a collecting field full of reprints and forgeries. Carlton showed examples of these along with genuine material. The stamps were produced from 1840 to 1860, when the US Post office took over the monopoly. Prior to the monopoly, some companies provided a country-wide service as well as city deliveries. The most famous of these was Wells-Fargo.
In the second half we started with stamps and covers from both sides in the civil war period (1861-1865). Confederate material is quite scarce, and Carlton told the story of buying a cover from that period and then finding five genuine stamps inside. Union material was more widely available and included a range of illustrated envelopes and cards
We finished with a selection of advertising covers, valentines cards and finally, wreck and salvage mail including several charred envelopes.
The next display meeting will be on April 16th when the subject will be ‘Africa and Adjacent Islands’. Meet at 7:30pm at Hanwell Fields Community Centre. The Banbury Stamp Society is on-line at ‘www.banburystampsociety.co.uk’, or contact John Davies on 01295 255831.