Lot
1731 
Asiatic Fleet Postal History Collection, 1900-42, extensive collection highly organized on pages in 25 large size binders, containing the history of 231 U.S. ships that were stationed in the Asiatic Theater, most officially assigned to the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Fleet, the collection contains 2,215 mailed covers and postcards plus numerous United Nations-mailed ones, these covers by cachet, subject and/or cancel display the movements, port-of-call, holidays and significant events providing a chronological history of each ship's travels, covers are arranged by ship category (i.e. DD-, CA-, etc.) and are displayed in both their designation and chronological, among the items contain a DANSF history for each ship as well as various documents and letters; overall highlights of the collection include 116 Crosby real ship-photo cachets (plus many non-ship photo Crosbys), 430 real photos - official, snapshot, cabinet, press photo releases and RPPC's as part of the other original contemporary ship material, 293 covers and cards are canceled prior to 1921 with the earliest dated 1895, there is also other other original source materials for ships that are dated prior to 1900, besides the majority of the covers having U.S. stamps, the collection includes five Japanese, 43 Chinese and 52 other nation/territory stamps including Russia, Hong Kong, Philippines, German, French (including Indo-China), Palestine, etc., individual highlights include covers from four of the five warships that visited Vladivostok, Russia in July 1937 (first visit to Russia since the revolution) with the very scarce Vladivostok port cancels, extremely rare USS Stewart DD-224 "RAMP" (Recovered Allied Military Personnel) cancel used when the ship was returning to the U.S. after having been sunk, then raised and used by the Japanese and finally returned tot he U.S. Navy after war's end, a USS Dale DD-4 cancel - this ship did not have an established P.O. but this 1914 cover has the USS Dale in the official cancel (only example the collector of this collection has seen), many rare to extremely rare covers and postcards of early gunboats including section of Yangtze River gunboats and captured Spanish warships are present, ships include USS Don Juan de Austria, Paragua, Yantic, Callao, Elcano, Quiros, Samar, Villalobos plus the scarce two cover combination of the Guam-Wake name change, also in the collection are many scarce to very rare covers and post cards from other U.S. Asiatic warships including USS General Alava AG-5, Abarenda AG-14, Robert L. Barnes AG-27, Panther AD-6, Buffalo AD-8, Alexander, Supply, Celtic AF-2, Glacier AF-4, Alert AS-4, Rainbow AS-7, Jupiter AC-3 (became Langley), Hartford IX-13, Monterey BM-6, Oregon BB-3, Kentucky BB-6, Wisconsin BB-9, Ohio BB-12, Ohio BB-12, Newark C-1, Cincinnati C-7, Raleigh C-8, Dale DD-4 and Decatur DD-5; condition of material is well above the norm throughout, Very Fine, a truly excellent basis for further continuation. Estimate $10,000 - 15,000.
A REMARKABLE INTACT PRE-WWII ASIATIC FLEET POSTAL HISTORY COLLECTION.
Realized: $9,500