AFDCS POSITION ON USPS COLOR FDC CANCELS
 

The American First Day Cover Society (AFDCS) is concerned by the limited availability of the recently announced color cancels to be applied to first day covers produced by the USPS. In addition, the AFDCS is hopeful that the USPS will confirm that it does not plan to produce official cacheted first day covers.
 
The USPS has recently announced the availability of colored first day cancels. We applaud the use of state-of-the-art technology to produce a more interesting product. However, the color cancellations will only be available on USPS-prepared 6 3/4 envelopes; collectors, cachet makers, and dealers will not be permitted to submit items for the colored cancellations. The Board of Directors of the American First Day Cover Society (AFDCS) believes that making the cancels available to all would enhance FDC collecting and result in greater profits to the USPS. We sympathize with the limitations of the new technology but hope the USPS will consider accepting envelopes that they are able to process with the existing technology and with the goal of soon being able to handle all items for all collectors.

In the past, the USPS has only produced and sometimes sold its own first day covers for occasional events of national significance, such as the establishment of the USPS or the anniversary of the moon landing. The USPS has recently announced that it will be producing and selling cacheted covers for the 2005 Presidential Inauguration. We understand that the inauguration is a special event and not a first day of issue. However, the Board of Directors of the American First Day Cover Society hopes that the USPS does not adopt a standard practice of the production and sale of cacheted first day covers as previously stated, most recently by Dave Failor, USPS Executive Director of Stamp Services. We believe such a practice would do significant harm to our dealer and cachet maker members as well as to the first day cover collecting hobby as evidenced by the severely diminished first day cover hobby in Great Britain, Canada, and Australia when those postal administrations began producing an "official" cachet.