Royal Palaces and Court Post Offices
Stamp issues connected with Royalty will have a range of sponsored and special handstamps, often the Royal Residences (Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle etc...) in the same way as other issues.
Sometimes covers will have been cancelled at the Post Office within a Palace, and these are usually serviced by favour, exclusively for the Royal Household. The cancellation will be a CDS (Circular Date Stamp) type, the same as the one used to cancel the normal outgoing Royal Household mail. These covers, especially those with strong connections to the issue, are much sought after.
Not all issues exist cancelled in this way. The two main reasons for this are:
- Covers were not permitted to receive the Palace CDS on that day
- None of the new stamps were available to the Court Post Office on the day of issue
Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are the two main Royal Post Offices. Mail is also sent from Sandringham or Balmoral, but the Court Post Offices in these locations were only used when the Monarch was in residence, and those cancels are very seldom seen on First Day Covers. Registered covers are often seen until around 1993, the reform of the Signed-For Service eliminated Registration.
Small steel CDS cancellers were used until 1997, (in the case of Buckingham Palace, some damage was sustained to the small canceller between July and November 1997), when a large rubber CDS was brought into use for all mail. The larger cancel has the words 'Court Post Office' in the upper part, but, after February 1998, instructions were apparently issued to remove these slugs when cancelling FDCs only. Only the words 'Buckingham Palace' or 'Windsor Castle' and the Postcode and Date remain.
The Value of a Royal Palace cover is of course dependant on supply and demand. Whilst Royal Connected Issues were serviced in larger numbers (some other issues hardly existing at all), they are obviously more popular.
Problems or Questions?
Email ernie@gbfdc.net