“Registrado” Covers

I. Introduction

While doing research on the Zeppelin covers originating out of Argentina with Brazilian franking, I noticed quite a few covers sent with an Argentinian return address and a Chilean cover, that seem not to have been part of the “official” Condor mailbag action. The main hallmark of all these covers is that they each carry an impression of the same rubber stamp “registrado”. A typical example of the “Arce” Argentine covers can be seen in Fig. 1. The one shown in Fig. 1 is addressed to Donald Dickason in Wooster, Ohio. Another was sent to W. C. Phillips & Co. in Hartford, Conn and at least two to C.D. Reimers in Tucson, Arizona. All have J. A. Arce return addresses Fig. 2. A further “Arce” cover addressed to New York and using a blue stationary has the alternate “Rosa” return address (Fig. 2).

Figure 1a: A typical “Arce” Buenos Aires cover

Figure 1b: Reverse of cover with typed return address

Both types of these Buenos Aires covers (J. A. Arce or Rosa Elvira Arce ) came with a version of the return address Adolfo Berro 3442 (Fig. 2).

	Figure 2: “Arce” addresses seen

A Chilean cover with the same registrado rubber stamp has also shown up and is displayed in Fig. 3. Fig. 4 displays an enlargement of the return address used on this letter card type cover.

Figure 3a: Front of Chilean letter card

Figure 3b: Reverse with Zeppelin markings

Figure 4: Chilean return address

II. Registered Mail 1930

In a previous article /1/, I've already debunked that the numbers found on some covers of this flight were registration numbers, a la the Brazilian Post Office, but instead numbers applied by the Zeppelin agent, von Meister, in New York. Furthermore, the article cites German PO regulations that didn't allow registration of letters carried on the flight. Yet many dealers and auction houses make a big deal of the fact that a cover carries the word “registrado”, as if this were true. In fact, the rubber stamped word was ignored, no number appears, no registration was undertaken.

That there is some connection between the five Argentine covers and the Chilean cover, it suffices to compare the 6 impressions of the rubber stamp (Fig. 5) to convince oneself that, in fact, they all were made by the same device. Of the six impressions in the figure, the last (lower right) is the copy on the Chilean cover.

Figure 5: “Registrado” from six different covers compared

III. Wrong Use?

A further correlation common among all six covers is the stamp used for the Zeppelin postage. In each and every case a 10$000 red Zeppelin stamp was used (without an USA overprint) even though they all were addressed to destinations in the USA. As has been already noted /2/, in spite of what some “so-called” experts and auction houses would have some naive collectors believe, there was no dictum that only USA-overprint stamps could be used for USA destinations.

References:

/1/ Artur Knoth: Early Zeppelin Covers Bear von Meister Numbers; Linn's Stamp News 75(3846), 28 (July 15, 2002)

/2/ Artur Knoth: Condor do Brasil Zeppelin Covers on the 1^st Pan Am Zeppelin Flight of 1930 : the Rate Samba :; FFE #8, 127 (2005)