First Day Covers

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The first day of issue is the day on which a postage stamp, postal card or stamped envelope is officially put on sale, usually in a particular city (usually within the country or territory of the stamp-issuing authority but sometimes from a temporary or permanent foreign or overseas office), though sometimes in several cities simultaneously, nationwide or in a particular region; later the item will usually become available in a wider area. There will usually be a first day of issue postmark, frequently a pictorial cancellation, indicating the city and date where the item was first issued, and "first day of issue" is often used to refer to this postmark. Unofficial first day of issue postmarks can also occur when a stamp collector purchases the stamps in question from a post office in the first day of issue city and then takes them (on that same day) to a post office in another city to have them cancelled.

(The stamps issued by private local posts can also have first days of issue, as can artistamps.)

A first day cover is an envelope where the postage stamps have been cancelled on their first day of issue.

Related to first day covers (FDC's) are event covers. Instead of marking the issuance of a stamp they commemorate events both big (say, the launching of a new space shuttle) and small (the opening of a new neighborhood supermarket, for instance). A design on the left side of the envelope (a "cachet") explains the event or anniversary being celebrated. Ideally the stamp or stamps affixed relate to the event. Cancels are obtained either from the location (e.g., Cape Canaveral, Anytown) or from the Postal Service's Cancellation Services unit in Kansas City.

The earliest known use (EKU) of a stamp may or may not be the same as the first day of issue. This can happen in several different ways:

Stamps may be inadvertently sold or stolen, and cancelled on an envelope or package by unaware postal officials prior to the first day of issue.; Minor changes, such as a different perforation, may not be noted by officials, and no one knows when they first went on sale. This is also true of some major stamp issues, especially during periods of civil unrest or if government records have been lost.; Some earlier stamps, especially high values, may not have found any customers using them on the day of issue, or those uses have been lost. EKUs for these may be weeks or even months after the official first day.;

The search for EKUs of both old and new stamps is an active area of philately, and new discoveries are regularly announced.

First day digital color postmark

In 2004 the United States Postal Service announced plans to introduce first day digital color postmarks to be used to cancel some first day covers for commemorative stamps in 2005. This has continued in 2006.

Read more at Wikipedia.org