Purgatory Post commemorates Dalai Lama, Apollo-Soyuz
New Hampshire-based Purgatory Post earlier this month issued three stamps commemorating two different subjects.
The first is a 6-sola stamp released July 5 to honor the 90th birthday of the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. The Dalai Lama, the head of Tibetan Buddhism, has lived in exile in India since 1959.
Purgatory Post 6-sola Dalai Lama stamp
Later, on July 15, Purgatory Post issued a pair of 5-sola stamps commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The stamps picture the astronauts and cosmonauts who took part.
Purgatory Post 5-sola Apollo-Soyuz stamps
The Americans and Soviets on July 15, 1975, each launched spacecraft into orbit. Two days later, on July 17, the Apollo and Soyuz space capsules docked with each other, and over the next 44 hours, astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton and cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov took part in the first crewed international space mission.
There’s an old truism that things are not always what they seem to be. That statement applies just as much in stamp collecting as it does in life in general.
Take, for example, the newest addition to my 14¢ American Indian collection. This cover mailed from Charleston, West Virginia, in 1933 bears a parcel post postmark on its front, and my initial assumption when I saw it was that it was sent by parcel post or fourth-class mail.
14¢ American Indian collect-on-delivery cover mailed from Charleston, West Virginia
Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered that there’s no way this is an example of fourth-class mail. The collect-on-delivery fee applicable at the time this envelope was mailed was 12¢ for matter valued at no more than $5, and that leaves only 2¢ for postage. No parcel post rate was that low; even mailing a letter first-class cost 3¢ by the time this envelope was used.
I found the answer to this mystery in Henry Beecher’s and Anthony Wakrukiewicz’s seminal work U.S. Domestic Postal Rates, 1872–2011. In that volume, Wakrukiewicz illustrates two other covers that at first glance appear to be examples of fourth-class mail, but which actually had to have been sent third-class! That is the case with this cover, too.
A quick search turned up a couple of other interesting connections to this cover as well. You can read my full write-up for complete details.
