Special Delivery
When I was a boy, my mother worked in an office in downtown New Orleans. She told me there was mail delivery three times a day in the business district. She could mail a letter in the morning to another business in the area and it would be delivered by lunch time. The other office could write a response, mail it after lunch, and it would be delivered to her office by the end of the day. That was amazing. Keep in mind that each letter had to go to a post office for sorting before being delivered. They did all of this for a few cents a letter.
Because they had such excellent service in those days, I cannot imagine many situations in which one would need to pay extra for special delivery – at least not within the same city. Across the country or even a few states away, it might be different. Special delivery meant that the envelop didn’t get into the usual pile to be sorted. It was handled immediately and sent on its way as soon as possible. When it arrived at the destination post office, they would hand it to a letter carrier for immediate delivery. To that end, most of these stamps show a mail man with a motorcycle for fast delivery.
Note
All of the stamps on this album page are unused except for the first one. It’s used. I’ve tried to buy one to replace it, but the postings aren’t clear to me that they have the right stamp for sale. The one on the first row (catalog number E12) is identical to the one at the end of the second row (E15). The only difference is the perforation on one side is slightly different.
Generally, I trust dealers to catagorize stamps, correctly. But the few copies of this stamp I’ve seen for sale aren’t very clear. I’ve tried counting the performation holes in the scanned images, but the difference between a performation of 11 holes and 10½ holes per two centimeters is slight and difficult to assess from a blury image.
Contains 10 spots: own 10 – 9 unused, 1 used.
Page is full, but not yet finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Mar 21, 2025
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
✗ |
E12 |
10c (jul 1922) |
|||
✓ |
E13 |
15c (apr 1925) |
|||
✓ |
E14 |
20c (apr 1925) |
|||
✓ |
E15 |
10c (nov 1927) |
|||
✓ |
E16 |
15c (aug 1931) |
|||
✓ |
E17 |
13c (oct 1944) |
|||
✓ |
E18 |
17c (oct 1944) |
|||
✓ |
E19 |
20c (nov 1951) |
|||
✓ |
E20 |
20c (oct 1954) |
|||
✓ |
E21 |
30c (sep 1957) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
