First Day covers

George IV First Day covers

First day covers from the reign of King George IV. King George IV GB FDC including rare franked original rare British stamps for sale on envelopes and postcards. First day covers have always appealed to stamp collectors. What are they? They are envelopes posted on the first day that a stamp became available, so they show either the normal franked date or in recent years, they may show a special frank to signify that it's a first day cover (usually these franks had to be applied at the post office counter when you bought a custom made first day cover envelope). To cash in on the demand for first day covers (sorry, to cater to demand from stamp collectors), the post office started to issue commermorative envelopes containing an information card. Many children used to be sent these as gifts, and I would think it's probably how a lot fo people actually got into stamp collecting in the first place.

One of the nice things about first day covers is the fact that they are generally quite inexpensive unless it's a very very rare stamp. As thousands if not hundreds of thousands were normally issued (especially over the last forty years or so), they are not normally that hard to track down. This makes them a great introduction to stamp collecting because you can pick up starter collections of first day covers for relatively little money.