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| The American Stamp Club of Great Britain |
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The American Stamp Club of Great Britain was founded in 1954. There are over 400 members from all over the world. |
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| Depreciated Currency Markings |
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| This article is based upon notes contained in the Cavendish Philatelic Auctions catalogue of the Jack Tysk collection, sold on 2 December 1999. With acknowledgements and thanks to Cavendish Philatelic Auctions for permission to use material from their catalogue. |
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One of the finest collections of United States Depreciated Currency Markings went under the auctioneer's hammer at Cavendish Philatelic Auctions. On 2nd December 1999. The Jack Tysk collection was probably the most comprehensive collection of these markings ever formed.
Jack Tysk of Minneapolis spent more than 30 years gathering this collection together. It contained many previously unrecorded items and the catalogue is likely to become the definitive listing for many years to come. Jack Tysk has never mounted or exhibited his collection of Depreciated Currency Markings. Thus the catalogue of his collection provides a unique work of reference for this important period of United States postal history.
A useful work on the subject is North Atlantic Mails, 1840-75 by Walter Hubbard and Dick Winter. Another work of reference is the American Stampless Cover Catalogue, edited by Phillips. |
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| What are Depreciated Currency Markings? |
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Specialists will be familiar with the term, but others may not be. The American Civil War created a monetary crisis. Bank payments in "specie" (another term for gold and silver) were suspended by the United States Treasury in December 1861. Two months later paper currency was introduced. This temporarily drove gold and silver coinage almost out of circulation. Inflation took hold and the flood of paper currency led to a drop in the value of the US dollar in gold equivalent of some 30%.
The United States Post Office faced problems with international mail because it had to account in gold for other countries' shares of postage on unpaid and underpaid mail addressed to the United States. Their losses as a result of this were in the region of $50,000 per year.
In March 1863 the US Postmaster General was given discretionary powers to vary the amounts of postage that were to be collected in the US in notes, according to the daily inflation rates. The more the paper money depreciated, so the larger was the difference in postage that was needed in "notes" as opposed to the static rates of gold or silver that were accepted.
Letters arriving from overseas were thus endorsed with special markings to show two rates depending on whether payment was made in US currency notes or by gold or silver coin.
The variety of ratios (that is paper money rates, or "Notes", compared with gold or silver "Currency" rates) is almost infinite from 1863 until 1875. Rates changed frequently; indeed it is thought that rates sometimes changed part way through the day, giving different rates on the same day.
The worst inflation period was during the late 1864 and the first two months of 1865. During that period anything from double to two and a half times as many cents in "notes" were needed as opposed to cents in "currency" for overseas postage. Most of the postal markings associated with these problems include both these rates within the date-stamp of the Postal Exchange Office that first handled the letters on their arrival from abroad. However, other manuscript and plain numeral marks were used early on, during very rapid inflation periods and in smaller offices. Thus the variety of both marks and rates is almost infinite.
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| The Jack Tysk collection |
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The covers in the Jack Tysk collection came from many countries including Cuba, China, Gabon, Poland and the Philippines. The more desirable items included the earliest known Boston first day depreciated currency cover from Liverpool, landed at Boston on 4 June 1863, and a cover from Siam (Thailand) via London and landed at New York with the straight line "PACKET LETTER" and "12/cents" accountancy mark with "U.S. NOTES/45", "33" and "NEW YORK AM. PKT."
The collection included covers with depreciated currency markings from Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and Portland. |
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| Reprinted with permission from The Mayflower, journal of the American Stamp Club of Great Britain |
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