What are First Day Covers? Let's Delve into the Amazing World of Philately

Very few people (mainly grade 12 students) would not even know what First Day Covers are, since they have probably never come across any! However, India and many other countries continue to have Philatelic Bureaus and departments. Among the many items provided by these Philatelic Bureaus are stamps, Day Covers, Commemorative Stamps, Contact Sheets, and so on. Some stamps indeed fetch a lot of money in the market because they are rare. Still, it is not just the value of the stamps that matters to the stamp collector, but also the knowledge one gains through collecting stamps, the pride of owning a valuable, rare stamp, and the network that is created with fellow stamp collectors. The photograph below presents a visual historical representation of the history of the means of transport through the years.

First-day covers are also issued to commemorate a new stamp on its official release date. A First-day cover also has historical significance because the postmark records the day and date of its release. First-day covers are collectors' items, and they are preserved in pristine condition by collectors. Many First-day covers are a thematic representation of a historical event, a person, or a piece of art. They can also be in the form of a cachet or a series of stamps based on a specific theme. The first image of the Philippines' First-day cover is a cachet that provides a visual representation of Dragonflies.

The picture of the First Day cover from India above is a cachet. It provides a visual representation of various kinds of headgear in India. Contact sheets, unlike cachets in First-day covers, contain sets of similar stamps or variations of stamps of the same theme on a single sheet of paper. I am sharing a few interesting examples of contact sheets below in one photograph. All three of the contact sheets from the Philippines represent the Year of the Monkey, the year of Year of the Pig, and the Year of the Ox.

Stamps are capsules of time; they are repositories of the past and there is much to learn from them, whether it is about the great recession of the 1920s, or the rise of Fascism, the rise of the empire of Japan, the invasion of China when the Japanese had to use Chinese stamps that were overwritten with Japanese symbols because the Japanese army had advanced too quickly for the printing presses to catch up. We notice that quite a few of the Sun Yat Sen stamps were used by the Japanese while they were advancing into China. I am sharing a few rare stamps that are much sought after by philatelists all over the world below.

This Chinese Stamp was overwritten by the Japanese during World War II

The value of the stamp has been overwritten due to the recession.