WHAT IS a FIRST DAY COVER (FDC) ?
A FDC is an envelope, card or other postal material with a stamp that was processed on the day of issue of that stamp. There may even have been a ceremony to commemorate the day of issue.
George Linn, a stamp dealer and publisher created the first First Day Cover in 1926 when he created a simple text cachet for the Harding Memorial Stamp issue. This first FDC will set you back between 300 and 600 US Dollars. From this, the collection of First Day Covers grew into a large market with sales in the millions of dollars. Most FDC’s have a cachet which is the artwork that has been added to the envelope and which complements the subject of the stamp. These cachets enhance the value as well as the collectively of the first day cover. Covers other than FDC’s are believed by stamp collectors to be necessary for a collection to be complete. Collectors are going back between 20 and 30 years to find stamps used on covers, as these are the last of modern postal history. These are documenting an important milestone in postal progress, in that they are showing the end of stamped mail as we know it.
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