VPS member John Ryves recently wrote us an email on April 21st 2023, attaching a very interesting cover
I found something very interesting recently when I picked up a job lot of Vaticano covers when I stumbled across a little Philatelist shop whilst walking around the lovely streets in Florence last week. The cover is an Alitalia cover for the visit of Pope Paul VI to the UN in New York City on 4th October 1965.
I have attached some images (shown above - font, back, back detail).
The stamp set is franked on the first day of issue on 4th October 1965 and addressed to the Alitalia building, which used to be on 5th Avenue. On the rear, the envelope is franked by the United Nations in New York, in the afternoon of the same day. Additionally, on the rear, it is franked AGAIN in the Citta del Vaticano by lunchtime on the 5th of October 1965.
So this infers that the cover was stamped, taken to Rome airport, flown to NYC and delivered to the addressee, then taken to the UN, franked again, and then taken back to JFK, and flown back to Rome, taken to Vatican City and franked again. Two trips across the Atlantic in 24 hours… (plus hand couriers I guess).
What a great story for a 1 Euro purchase last Saturday!!!!
Please have you seen this before, and do you know if this was something that Poste Vaticane did regularly during Papal journeys? I guess it probably was, and still is. I was wondering if it went in official Vatican luggage?
The front postmark is a first-day cover postmark Type VI-15 and is documented in the German book Der Vatikanstat book (copyright 1968). The back postmark 10/11/1965 is a bit confusing because it does not look like any of the standard Vatican postmarks but could have been made from a machine cancellation device by simply positioning stamping of the the envelope. It would be interesting to find other examples of this postmark.
Looking through the VPS cover archive I did find two covers for this date which are shown below. It is always fun to find Vatican covers postmarked on the same date!
Only with a magnifying glass was I able to confirm the date on this cover!
There were not any postmarks on the back of this cover.
Postmark Type I-45
If anyone knows more details or has ideas about the cover John discovered please let us know.
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