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Over the past couple of days, the Daily Emails have discussed the first day covers (FDCs) of Vatican City, both past and present. FDC collecting has a strong history for Vatican philatelists and adds a colorful component to our Vatican City collections. As we have discovered, the current state of affairs for FDC collectors is not very encouraging. The covers currently released by CFN are very plain, with a regular cancellation as one would see on mail moving through normal channels:  2020 Easter Cover purchased as "stamp on cover" from the CFN website We have discovered that Vatican City does have special cancellations which are used on the first day of issue for its new stamp releases, but access to covers with these cancellations has proven to be difficult, even when you know how to get them:  February 19, 2024, Pontificate of Pope Francis 2023 Issue Specific first day postmark received from the Vatican Post Office In addition, the Vatican Post Office produces very few cacheted covers, and these can only be purchased as part of a special stamp folder sold by the Post Office. The folders are not sold through CFN, and they do not produce the folders and cacheted covers for every stamp issued.  Easter 2024 Vatican Post Office Cover Special Easter Postmark, Dated March 31, 2024 Cover issued by the Vatican Post Office Only sold in a "special" folder through the Vatican Post Office Add to this the evaporation of commercial FDC cover producers for Vatican City releases, and it becomes very difficult to find current commercially-produced FDCs to add to our collections. What is a Vatican City FDC collector to do? The Website Team has presented this three-day series on FDCs with two goals. First, we wanted to provide a review of Vatican City FDC collecting. The second reason is to determine whether VPS members would be interested in participating in a program to get Vatican City FDCs which are cancelled with the special first-day-of-issue postmarks. As described in yesterday’s Daily Email, it is a bit of a laborious process to order these through CFN: orders for covers with the first day cancellations are considered “special orders” by CFN and require the entry of a lot of information on the order form. During his recent visit to the Vatican, VPS Webmaster Marvin Lanahan met face-to-face with CFN representatives to discuss a means of getting FDCs from CFN whereby they can be ordered in some volume from CFN and distributed/sold to interested VPS members at a reasonable cost. CFN expressed a real interest in working with VPS to make this happen. The program is still being formulated, with more details to come. However, the Team would like to gauge interest from the VPS membership. If there is sufficient interest, we will work to build a program which will make these covers available. Given the current state of FDC distribution, this would be a marked improvement and provide access to covers in a simple process at a reasonable cost. NOTE: this is not intended to be a “money-making” proposition for VPS. We are also looking into improving access to the special folders sold by the Vatican Post Office. One of the founding tenets of the Vatican Philatelic Society is to work to enhance interest in Vatican stamp collecting. As stated in the VPS Constitution and Bylaws (Article 2): The object of the Society shall be to promote the collecting of stamps of the Pontifical State and Vatican City State, and to provide the opportunity for the exchange of knowledge concerning them.The Website Team feels a program to get FDCs from CFN fulfills that goal, and we are hopeful that a good number of VPS members would be interested in being part of this new program. So, if you are interested in participating in the proposed FDC acquisition program, please click on the response button below and let us know. You can also add your comments on the website in the Chat Box or email the Team at webmaster@vaticanstamps.org. Images of the covers presented in this Email are from the collection of Marvin Lanahan |
