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Monday, December 29, 2008

Official vs. Non-official

Hello!

Today I'm posting about Official versus Non-official First Day Covers.

Official FDCs are the ones issued by the countries' Postal Agency, like the one I'm showing you bellow, issued 30.4.1973:


PORTUGAL: Europa CEPT issue of 1973

On the same day, a Portuguese national collectors' association, named CFP and probably one of the biggest in the country, also issued its FDC, with of course a different cachet.


Some more examples of other FDCs issued by the CFP:


In my personal opinion, all cachet makers have their space in the philatelic market, the US is a good example of that... with so many makers!!! Yes... I know that the official US PO FDCs are blank ones, wich leaves more market room for all the makers!

Our Portuguese official PO FDCs are not blank but with a chachet.... And that is probably the reason why, here in Portugal, today no one makes any cachet FDCs! We all buy the oficial ones or none at all!

So... I leave here an enormous congratulation to all former cachet makers of Portugal and all the still active cachet makers in the world... that still give us the chance to pick a FDC from a huge variety of diferent cachet images :) Thank you all!!!

3 comments:

Pablo (yo) said...

I don´t like much the FDC. It happens that you can cancel your stamps with a FD cancellation even many months after the day of issue. So the "First Day" part is quite a lie, just to allow the collectors fill their albums..

Anonymous said...

The duration of the 1st day cancellation varies from country to country (from a couple of years to a couple of days).

Here I think it is 1 year.

I personally like unaddressed fdcs but postally used covers have the most historical value, for sure!

Regards

Karmanovsky Alexander said...

I like your blog!
Thank you.
Happy new Year!!
Regards,
Alexander