Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
The day of posting is relatively clear — Jan. 14, which happens to be my birthday — but the year isn't visible.
The postage rate of .03 cents for the first ounce was in effect for 26 years, from July 6, 1932 until August 1, 1958. I'm guessing that the cover was posted a few years after the Second World War, when paper production was returning to pre-war conditions and quality, and before the spring or summer of 1954, which is when the first stamps of the Liberty Issue began to replace the Prexies, which had been in use since 1938. The name of the sender seems familiar to me (Arenas Valley was a very small community), so I assume that it was posted between our arrival in the summer of 1949 and our move to Silver City in the summer of 1957.
The back of the cover is featureless except for two black arrows pointing to the flap — very helpful, those arrows — but possibly they can help to reveal the cover's provenance:
Bob
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This cover is probably from the years between 1955 and 1966.
Many years ago, I acquired a group of nearly 35,000 of these same remittance envelopes mailed from Texas post offices to various oil companies in Houston. Apparently a Houston based collector had connections in the mail rooms of several of these companies. He must have picked up bags of these covers once a month, as most of the covers were dated within a 5-7 day window from each month, indicating that they represented only a few days of payment processing. These were all dated within that 12 year window. I ended up with about 2,000 different Texas postal markings.
Eventually most of the excess covers, lots and lots of duplicate postmarks, were given away.
Otherwise, there is no real way one could narrow down the mailing date unless they could identify the sender as being a resident at the Arenas Valley, NM during a more narrow window of time.
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According to Wikipedia Arenas valley had a post offoice from1/1/1946 to march7/1987. maybe this narrows your years to search.Familysearch does not list anyone by the name of Fell in New Mexico, so presume they did not stay for long.
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Mike's response is intriguing, but I'm thinking it likely wrong (ask me why, if you're really interested). Instead, this cover was likely mailed from the introduction of the Prexies (April 25, 1938 for the 1c stamp) and the end of the 3c rate (August 1, 1958, per your note). It's a huge window; maybe others can add other restricting items.
Actually, as I conclude, I see that Mike's guess is still good for its first three years.
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Thank you, gentlemen. You're all on the right track, I think.
@ MikeL — That's valuable information! If I had 35,000 covers, I'd have to move to a bigger apartment!
The Arenas Valley cover's design seems very mid-50s — mid-60s. My wife helped out with a search on newspapers.com where she found an M.J. Fell operating a Gulf gas station in nearby Silver City from 1965 through 1966. She also found the a person with the same name as a resident of Tyrone, New Mexico, a "planned" community near Silver City; between 1968 and 1972, 325 homes were built by the Phelps Dodge mining company (now Freeport-McMoRan) to house miners. I can easily see someone moving from Arenas Valley, a run-down bedroom community for people employed in Silver City (and in the Kennecott Copper mine at Santa Rita and its smelter at Hurley), to the more upscale (but boring) Tyrone.
@ Sheepshanks — The opening/closing dates for the post office in Arenas Valley are about right. I'd have to check my own web page to find out. By the time it closed, though, it had been moved from Arenas Valley "proper" on Arenas Valley Road out to U.S. Highway 180.
@ amsd — I think the design of the cover is definitately post-war rather than pre-war. It's also possible that the Arenas Valley Post Office had a supply of Prexies long after the introduction of the Prexies.
I used Google Street View to find the location of the Gulf gas station in Silver City. The same building seems to be there, heavily renovated for use as a realty business. There's a large parking lot which certainly could have been part of a gas station's property.
Bob
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I was not considering of the 4 cent rate factor when I created my initial response. With that in mind, I agree that definitely narrows the possible date range to the 1955 - Aug 1, 1958.
The format of the address for Gulf Oil agrees with all my examples in the 1955-1958 time frame. A different format and PO Box number was used in the 1960s, which again limits the period of use to the mid-1950s.
Over the years, I have seen many of the Gulf Oil and other covers from this hoard offered on eBay and other venues, dealer dollar boxes, etc. These were from several other states besides Texas. My group had obviously been "picked over" several times before I acquired them. All covers with Station and Branch cancels had been removed, all covers with RPO/HPO markings removed, almost all with auxiliary markings had been removed, and all with commemorative stamps had been removed.
I have never seen any of these with dates earlier than 1955. They may exist, but most likely from another source than the one I described.
@Bobstamp. After I had created my selection of unique Texas markings for my personal collection, I stored these away for nearly 30 years. When the Post Mark Collectors Club held their convention in Texas a few years ago, I donated these to the "FREE" table and they were swooped up by many convention attendees. But for a while, I could claim to have a 40,000 Texas cover collection. 
Another additional interesting side comment .
When I bought these, the seller had an association with a funeral home. They were shipped to me by UPS, in 14 or 15 boxes that had original held embalming fluid, each one with very prominent labels as such on the outside of the boxes with all sorts of warning messages. I got some rather strange looks from the UPS driver when he delivered them.
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Henry Brooks (Webpaper) found a real estate company in Silver City that listed a Pat Fell as a real estate broker. Following his suggestion, I emailed her and got an immediate and pleased response: She is the daughter-in-law of Marvin John Fell, who posted the letter to Gulf Oil from the Arenas Valley Post Office. Pat is married to Marvin's younger son, Don.
The Fell family moved from Texas to Arenas Valley in 1955, and lived there for a few years before moving to Silver City. At first, Marvin worked at a couple of jobs before buying the Gulf Gas Station on Silver Heights Blvd. in Silver City. He was a brakeman on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway train that transported copper ore from the Kennecott Copper Mine at Santa Rita to Kennecott's smelter at Hurley, and he worked for a car dealer in Silver City. (Silver City, Arenas Valley, Santa Rita, and Hurley are all within a half-hour drive or less from each other.)
The Fells lived in Arenas Valley for only a year or so before moving to Silver City in 1956 or 1957, after which Marvin bought the gas station. The one-cent Prexy stamps franking the cover had been replaced by the Liberty series in 1954, but remainders have continued to be used since then. The Arenas Valley Post Office might still have had a stock of them, or, as Marvin remembered, his mother used to buy booklets of stamps. The stamps on the Gulf Cover, however, did not come from a booklet (none of them have straight edges like the bookleet stamps; the post office might not have had the booklets at some point, so his mother might have bought sheets from a pane of the stamps.
Why was the cover posted in Arenas Valley? Marvin suggested that his dad might have been visiting a friend in Arenas Valley and took advantage of that visit to mail the letter to Gulf.
I still have a few questions. The most significant one is this, and is directed mainly @ MikeL: What would Marvin have been sending in that cover? A cheque covering the purchase of Gulf gasoline and other products? Cheques were normally mailed in #10 envelopes, at least in my experience. Was it simply a report of sales?
Final notes:
• The Fell's eldest son, David, was eight years old when the family moved to Arenas Valley. He would have attended public school in Silver City, and woujld have ridden the school bus with me. But I was 12 years old in 1955, so it's unlikely he and I would have had paid much attention to each other.
• The real estate firm that Pat worked at is located in the same, heavily refurbished building that the Gulf Gas Station was in. I'm still working on finding out how that happened.
Thanks to everyone who has helped me to figure out the provenance of the Gulf cover.
Bob
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These were remittance envelopes, primarily to send the payment for a credit card invoice.
Most people would write a personal check. A few might purchase a postal money order.
I've never seen one of these sent as registered mail, which could indicate a person sent cash.
MikeL
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Thank you, Mike. Makes sense. Perhaps Gulf wouldn’t accept personal cheques.
Bob
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Bob,
I don't know when the various oil companies began the personal credit card "push", but during the late 1950s when I started to drive, I had to pay cash for what gas I used. I was too young for a credit card, and, you know how parents were.
I never had a Gulf Oil card, so I can't address whether they accepted checks or when they might have started.
But, while in college during the early 1960s, I had both a Cities Service and Texaco credit card, and I paid both bills with personal check.
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I want to add this cover to my Box 28 web page, about the post office in Southwestern New Mexico that helped get me started in stamp collecting, but I'm curious about the date of mailing:
The day of posting is relatively clear — Jan. 14, which happens to be my birthday — but the year isn't visible.
The postage rate of .03 cents for the first ounce was in effect for 26 years, from July 6, 1932 until August 1, 1958. I'm guessing that the cover was posted a few years after the Second World War, when paper production was returning to pre-war conditions and quality, and before the spring or summer of 1954, which is when the first stamps of the Liberty Issue began to replace the Prexies, which had been in use since 1938. The name of the sender seems familiar to me (Arenas Valley was a very small community), so I assume that it was posted between our arrival in the summer of 1949 and our move to Silver City in the summer of 1957.
The back of the cover is featureless except for two black arrows pointing to the flap — very helpful, those arrows — but possibly they can help to reveal the cover's provenance:
Bob
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re: What year (roughly)
This cover is probably from the years between 1955 and 1966.
Many years ago, I acquired a group of nearly 35,000 of these same remittance envelopes mailed from Texas post offices to various oil companies in Houston. Apparently a Houston based collector had connections in the mail rooms of several of these companies. He must have picked up bags of these covers once a month, as most of the covers were dated within a 5-7 day window from each month, indicating that they represented only a few days of payment processing. These were all dated within that 12 year window. I ended up with about 2,000 different Texas postal markings.
Eventually most of the excess covers, lots and lots of duplicate postmarks, were given away.
Otherwise, there is no real way one could narrow down the mailing date unless they could identify the sender as being a resident at the Arenas Valley, NM during a more narrow window of time.
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re: What year (roughly)
According to Wikipedia Arenas valley had a post offoice from1/1/1946 to march7/1987. maybe this narrows your years to search.Familysearch does not list anyone by the name of Fell in New Mexico, so presume they did not stay for long.
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re: What year (roughly)
Mike's response is intriguing, but I'm thinking it likely wrong (ask me why, if you're really interested). Instead, this cover was likely mailed from the introduction of the Prexies (April 25, 1938 for the 1c stamp) and the end of the 3c rate (August 1, 1958, per your note). It's a huge window; maybe others can add other restricting items.
Actually, as I conclude, I see that Mike's guess is still good for its first three years.
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re: What year (roughly)
Thank you, gentlemen. You're all on the right track, I think.
@ MikeL — That's valuable information! If I had 35,000 covers, I'd have to move to a bigger apartment!
The Arenas Valley cover's design seems very mid-50s — mid-60s. My wife helped out with a search on newspapers.com where she found an M.J. Fell operating a Gulf gas station in nearby Silver City from 1965 through 1966. She also found the a person with the same name as a resident of Tyrone, New Mexico, a "planned" community near Silver City; between 1968 and 1972, 325 homes were built by the Phelps Dodge mining company (now Freeport-McMoRan) to house miners. I can easily see someone moving from Arenas Valley, a run-down bedroom community for people employed in Silver City (and in the Kennecott Copper mine at Santa Rita and its smelter at Hurley), to the more upscale (but boring) Tyrone.
@ Sheepshanks — The opening/closing dates for the post office in Arenas Valley are about right. I'd have to check my own web page to find out. By the time it closed, though, it had been moved from Arenas Valley "proper" on Arenas Valley Road out to U.S. Highway 180.
@ amsd — I think the design of the cover is definitately post-war rather than pre-war. It's also possible that the Arenas Valley Post Office had a supply of Prexies long after the introduction of the Prexies.
I used Google Street View to find the location of the Gulf gas station in Silver City. The same building seems to be there, heavily renovated for use as a realty business. There's a large parking lot which certainly could have been part of a gas station's property.
Bob
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re: What year (roughly)
I was not considering of the 4 cent rate factor when I created my initial response. With that in mind, I agree that definitely narrows the possible date range to the 1955 - Aug 1, 1958.
The format of the address for Gulf Oil agrees with all my examples in the 1955-1958 time frame. A different format and PO Box number was used in the 1960s, which again limits the period of use to the mid-1950s.
Over the years, I have seen many of the Gulf Oil and other covers from this hoard offered on eBay and other venues, dealer dollar boxes, etc. These were from several other states besides Texas. My group had obviously been "picked over" several times before I acquired them. All covers with Station and Branch cancels had been removed, all covers with RPO/HPO markings removed, almost all with auxiliary markings had been removed, and all with commemorative stamps had been removed.
I have never seen any of these with dates earlier than 1955. They may exist, but most likely from another source than the one I described.
@Bobstamp. After I had created my selection of unique Texas markings for my personal collection, I stored these away for nearly 30 years. When the Post Mark Collectors Club held their convention in Texas a few years ago, I donated these to the "FREE" table and they were swooped up by many convention attendees. But for a while, I could claim to have a 40,000 Texas cover collection.
Another additional interesting side comment .
When I bought these, the seller had an association with a funeral home. They were shipped to me by UPS, in 14 or 15 boxes that had original held embalming fluid, each one with very prominent labels as such on the outside of the boxes with all sorts of warning messages. I got some rather strange looks from the UPS driver when he delivered them.
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re: What year (roughly)
Henry Brooks (Webpaper) found a real estate company in Silver City that listed a Pat Fell as a real estate broker. Following his suggestion, I emailed her and got an immediate and pleased response: She is the daughter-in-law of Marvin John Fell, who posted the letter to Gulf Oil from the Arenas Valley Post Office. Pat is married to Marvin's younger son, Don.
The Fell family moved from Texas to Arenas Valley in 1955, and lived there for a few years before moving to Silver City. At first, Marvin worked at a couple of jobs before buying the Gulf Gas Station on Silver Heights Blvd. in Silver City. He was a brakeman on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway train that transported copper ore from the Kennecott Copper Mine at Santa Rita to Kennecott's smelter at Hurley, and he worked for a car dealer in Silver City. (Silver City, Arenas Valley, Santa Rita, and Hurley are all within a half-hour drive or less from each other.)
The Fells lived in Arenas Valley for only a year or so before moving to Silver City in 1956 or 1957, after which Marvin bought the gas station. The one-cent Prexy stamps franking the cover had been replaced by the Liberty series in 1954, but remainders have continued to be used since then. The Arenas Valley Post Office might still have had a stock of them, or, as Marvin remembered, his mother used to buy booklets of stamps. The stamps on the Gulf Cover, however, did not come from a booklet (none of them have straight edges like the bookleet stamps; the post office might not have had the booklets at some point, so his mother might have bought sheets from a pane of the stamps.
Why was the cover posted in Arenas Valley? Marvin suggested that his dad might have been visiting a friend in Arenas Valley and took advantage of that visit to mail the letter to Gulf.
I still have a few questions. The most significant one is this, and is directed mainly @ MikeL: What would Marvin have been sending in that cover? A cheque covering the purchase of Gulf gasoline and other products? Cheques were normally mailed in #10 envelopes, at least in my experience. Was it simply a report of sales?
Final notes:
• The Fell's eldest son, David, was eight years old when the family moved to Arenas Valley. He would have attended public school in Silver City, and woujld have ridden the school bus with me. But I was 12 years old in 1955, so it's unlikely he and I would have had paid much attention to each other.
• The real estate firm that Pat worked at is located in the same, heavily refurbished building that the Gulf Gas Station was in. I'm still working on finding out how that happened.
Thanks to everyone who has helped me to figure out the provenance of the Gulf cover.
Bob
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re: What year (roughly)
These were remittance envelopes, primarily to send the payment for a credit card invoice.
Most people would write a personal check. A few might purchase a postal money order.
I've never seen one of these sent as registered mail, which could indicate a person sent cash.
MikeL
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re: What year (roughly)
Thank you, Mike. Makes sense. Perhaps Gulf wouldn’t accept personal cheques.
Bob
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re: What year (roughly)
Bob,
I don't know when the various oil companies began the personal credit card "push", but during the late 1950s when I started to drive, I had to pay cash for what gas I used. I was too young for a credit card, and, you know how parents were.
I never had a Gulf Oil card, so I can't address whether they accepted checks or when they might have started.
But, while in college during the early 1960s, I had both a Cities Service and Texaco credit card, and I paid both bills with personal check.
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