Page 29 - Demo

It wasn%u2019t until 1923 that the first cachet appeared on a First Day Cover%u2014for a stamp honoring President Warren G. Harding. It was designed by George Linn, publisher of Linn%u2019s Stamp News, and by today%u2019s standards it was not very eyecatching. Yet, it spurred an interest in First Day Cover collecting. Eventually, the number of cachet producers grew into the scores by the 1950s and 1960s. This period was the golden age of First Day Cover collecting. This collection is comprised of a wide variety of cachets for First Day Covers honoring a single stamp%u2014the three-cent Indiana Territory Sesquicentennial issue, which was released in Vincennes, Indiana on July 4, 1950. Three different first-day cancellations were used by the Vincennes Post Office. One is distinguished by a larger roundel. The two with the smaller roundels are only slightly different from each other. One has a pair of horizontal bars above and below the words FIRST DAY OF ISSUE, with a very short bar at each end of the words. (These bars are called the killer.) The other version lacks the two short bars. There are also covers reported in the philatelic literature that have unofficial cancellations by the Chicago & Evansville Railway Post Office, although they are not common. I was able to obtain one cover with an unofficial cancellation by the Indianapolis-Vincennes Highway Post Office that is not mentioned in the philatelic literature (below).