The Post office FDCs of Antigua & Barbuda with the common Coat of Arms logo is strangely not seen often on auctions. I’ve been looking for a long time and found them now in a lot of Antigua FDCs. Seems that they are either so common that no-one bother to put them out on auctions or that they are somewhat scarce. Shown here are the SA 26.1a – c, the last one is a plain cachet but it also exist with the Coat of Arms logo.
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The Icelandic SA stamp commemorated the centennial for the SA on Iceland. At the time, it was not legal to use pictures of still living persons on Icelandic stamps, the only exception was the head of state. However, on the photo used it is very easy to recognize the two officers; Anne Marie and Harold Reinholdtsen, who were stationed on the island from 1977 to 1982 (Akureyri) and from 1984 to 1990 in the capital Reykjavik. The picture was taken at one of their open air meetings in Reykjavik in 1990. It must have been thought of as a good illustration of the SA’s work on
Iceland, although it was not meant that the persons should be recognized (they were not asked about being portrayed on the stamp). Shown here are two rare cachets illustrated with an artwork picturing the founder William Booth. It was issued in two colours, red and blue.
This US combo FDC was just obtained. It’s an FDC with the Care stamp issued 27 Oct 1971 and also includes the Salvation Army stamp from six years earlier. Not seen before and is likely a rare item.
A nice Belgium balloon flight cover was just obtained. It is multistamped including the SA Christmas stamp. A very illustrative cover with added slogan PMs, e.g., the ICARUS addon. The Balloon flight seems to have been a Christmas tradtion; it was the 9th time this Balloon courier was undertaken.
An extensive amount of special covers with SA related motifs and/or PMs have been issued in the UK where the SA originated. Some of these were issued in very limited edition and are hard to get. An example is two Swan FDCs, the Swanland cachet (only 5 covers!!!) and the Old Swan corps registered cover with the Old Swan CDS PM and gutter pairs (25 covers!). For the Spitfire FDC w/ SA PM and the Penzance FDC, the editions were limited to 60 and 55 covers, respectively. The Penzance cover is estimated to £60 on covercollecting.com due to the limited edition. The last three covers seen below were issued in 125 covers.
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Harry Hayes was a knowledgeable SA philatelist and was also the first editor of the SA Philatelic Circle Journal (1991 – 2005), later called the Australian and again later the International SA Philatelic & Historical Journal. His home corps was Batley Castle. In 1978 they tried to build up a building fund. To support the fund, Harry issued a few limited FDC issues of the 25th Anniversary of the Coronation of QE. A special “parachute post” slogan PM was added and the text “Issued in aid of the SA Batley Castley Building Fund”. The shown cover here was made in a very limited edition of 45 and had two prestamped QE 5p in addition to a single blue coronation stamp.
The 1967 SA stamp commemorated the 80th Anniversary of the SA in Denmark. This seldom seen Danish FDC from 1967 was just obtained. It pictures a female salvationist on the phone. The cover is said to be privately made (ref.: SA catalogue) and was supposedly issued in a limited edition.