MODERN U.S. ENCASED POSTAGE STAMPS

 

I recently acquired the "modern" (1940's & 1950's) encased postage inventory and accumulation of the late Rockford, Illinois dealer Rich Hartzog. I'm aware of your soft spot for Civil War era encased postage so I thought this group of second generation U.S. encased postage might be of interest to others as well. Most of the encased of this era were made by two individuals, Albert W. Ault, a Cincinnati, Ohio coin & stamp dealer and R.H.Rosholt, a Round Lake, Illinois coin & medal collector.

Ault produced encased postage mostly for other coin dealers and collectors including Sol Kaplan of Cincinnati, Max Schwartz and Harvey Dolin of New York City, C.A. Brownell of Clearwater, Florida, A.N.A. President Nelson Thorson of Omaha and more. According to Max Schwartz, the price from Ault was $40 per 100 pieces which could be broken into groups of 25 with different stamps and/or metal frames. Ault often used 5c & Xc stamps cut from the 1947 CIPEX souvenir sheet.

 

Rosholt catered more to collectors and dealers in the greater Chicago area including B.E. Brown of Viroqua, Wisconsin, Ernest Jonas of Chicago as well as the Chicago Numismatic Roundtable and his own personal encased postage cards. His encased postage tended to be a larger 38mm size with embossed backs of various metals, paper, leather and other materials. An October 1977 TAMS Journal article by Donald Thrall gives more background and lists 17 issuer and metal varieties of modern encased postage known to him. The Hartzog group includes at least 45 different issuer, stamp & metal varieties plus patterns, trials, duplicates and a few dozen European metal and celluloid encased postage which I will be auctioning on eBay over the next several weeks under the user name celluloid.

 

 

Dick adds:

 

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