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As you know airmail event covers collecting is a wide open field and an extension of stamp collecting. A “cover” is an envelope that has seen postal service. Many airmail event covers have “cachets,” a rubber stamped or printed impression or label placed on the cover descriptive of the event for which it was mailed.

Routes, rates, cities, states, countries, first days, special events, pilot autographs, and markings are all desirable areas of cover collecting. Some covers may be flown, while others may note a special event, such as an airport dedication. Covers for your collection may be found in dealer stocks at stamp exhibitions and bourses, by mail from established dealers, in club and public philatelic auctions, in exchange with other collectors, and through ads in the philatelic press.

Postal history or commercial airmail cover collecting is an enjoyable aspect of the hobby. Here you can learn routes, rates, and how airlines developed. Collecting Airmail was designed to help you enter the field of airmail collecting by having leading American aerophilatelists write about their own collecting interests. The authors share a passion for aerophilately, and together they hope their essays offer an overview of airmail collecting and an inspiration to novice collectors seeking expanded horizons.

Some Air Mail History. Airmail began long before the invention of the airplane, or even the balloon. It began with pigeon post used by armies many years before the birth of Christ to send messages long distances, but air mail as we regard it really began on May 15, 1918, when the world’s first scheduled airmail route, between the nation’s capital and New York, was inaugurated. The distance of the route was 218 miles, and one daily round-trip was made six days a week.