Old covers, though they may be striking, almost artistic on their own, thanks to the orderly arrangement of their various elements (stamp, advertising art, ornate handwritten address, unusual pictorial postmark), are often happy accidents, created for a practical purpose, not to be beautiful. Even a classic advertising cover, though we can appreciate its beauty today, holding it in high esteem as a collectible item, existed only to call attention to itself, its contents and the product that it was selling. It was a function of commerce, not art.
It wasn't until the well known and much maligned by postal history purists First Day Cover (FDC) that an envelope existed only to call attention to its outside. The purpose of its art or cachet was simple enough; nothing more than a clever trick to elucidate a product no further than a few inches away: the stamp that the envelope carried.
The invention of the cacheted FDC was a stroke of genius by a stamp dealer and philatelic journalist named George Linn; now not only could stamp dealers sell stamps, but also envelopes, aka covers. And then the collector would need cover albums, and all manner of paraphernalia to care for his collection.
And of course he would have to sign up for a subscription service to get his covers: acquiring first day cancels on a cacheted envelope was once a mysterious and arcane task, better done by a professional. One from the Exalted Guild of First Day Cover Providers, no doubt, who could perform the magic deed that was beyond the humble collector himself. In short, it's not much of a stretch to see First Day Covers as an advertisement for the philatelic trade. But unlike earlier advertising covers, it isn't selling whips, plows or patent medicine. The product it is selling is itself and by extension the culture of First Day Cover collecting.
Think of the cover collecting world as two very different hemispheres. One is populated by the postal history collectors, who see their covers as authentic, having traveled through the world's postal systems. The other is made up of First Day Cover and philatelic cover collectors. The FDC collector is pleased as punch to buy the latest stamp applied to an artistic cacheted envelope and canceled with "First Day of Issue." It doesn’t even matter that the cover is unaddressed -- in fact that condition is the collector’s preference, as the mail stream can soil the prized souvenir in its travels. The only similarity that his prized collectible bears to what the postal history collector collects is that it has a stamp on it. But these two types of collector can once again help to illustrate one of the prime features of our great hobby, which is summed up simply: Different strokes for different folks.
