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I cannot find any reference to a Kingsford Smith FDC like mine.

Were many carried to Sydney on the day of issue? What is the vale of my cover these days?

Grateful for any info you may have.

Alan

Current CV for this is $140, retail similar for a good example like that.

No idea about numbers though.

Cheers
Chris

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Always on the lookout for Australian pre decimal First Day Covers.

From the cancels on the rear of the cover, this is AAMC 180, the Melbourne to Sydney flight of the VH-UMI 'Southern Moon' 19th March 1931.

Numbers flown were 480.

AAMC value is given as $125 (though being registered and to WA would add value).

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Tony

Thanks to both for your comments.
I have a similar cover, bearing the 3 stamps, but addressed to Tonga! I just found it this morning when beginning to sort through my Tongan postal history and hadn't appreciated it was an FDC!
Alan

In 30 years of dealing I have never had this cover design before. A FIRST DAY COVER

It will be many times scarcer than the Eustis 180/181a/181 above - itself a fairly scarce cover.

Seeing it has a PERTH cancel, and the unusual design, and the Red FIRST DAY COVER handstamp. The Pom confirms this is MITCHELL produced FDC - a design he had not seen before.

Glen this is not a Mitchell FDC. We beleive it to be done by the addrssee beacause all the ones seen are adressed to Allen.

Frank interesting info ..... it was something I knew nothing about, but Chris ID'd it last Friday as definitely a Mitchell, so I went with that, as he is very good on early cachet makers.

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=25127

As you can see a member posted one used 2 days after mine, addressed to the UK, Registered, that oddly went nowhere near the UK it seems! So that one is very strange.

Chris showed a verified Mitchell FDC of the issue along with the same rubber handstamp saying "FIRST DAY COVER"

Both also had the identical date 'Perth Registered' March 19 cds, and a Registered label very close in number to mine, which makes me believe if it was not Mitchell who did them, then it was someone he worked closely with.

They used the same distinctive handstamp, (that no-one in Australia used then, correct?) and indeed both covers were lodged at the same time, at the same Perth GPO counter, there is little doubt.

The undoubted Mitchell cover using the same handstamp on it, is shown below that Chris posted.




Be a great story for Michael to write up in the Cover Society Journal perhaps, to see what other info might be shed on these?

Here is the same design cover, but posted 2 days later, also Reg'd at Perth GPO.

The label numbers are 1400 ahead of mine, so that shows Perth used around 700 a day, hence my cover and the Mitchell FDC were lodged very close together.

This cover was underpaid for UK airmail, and clearly never went to UK Reg'd, as zero backstamps other than one at lodgement. So WHERE did it go is the mystery here??????????

If if sent by sea as underpaid, it would have UK Reg'd backstamps as the Poms were meticulous on that - in fact it would generally have 2 or 3 from UK.

More usually it would have been sent by air and Postage Due assessed for recipient to pay. (And had that occurred, its collector value would have doubled!)

If Austcovers says it's Allen, rather than Mitchell, I'm happy to go with that. He has access to far more info than I do.

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Always on the lookout for Australian pre decimal First Day Covers.