D802

Los Angeles Olympics

Men's Diving

Collins Cover Announcement 

SUMMER OLYMPICS

(Set of Four)

The hand painting is now complete on the last of my Olympic FDCs -- the Summer Games set of four. Events depicted in the colorful cachets are: diving, wrestling, canoeing and long jump. As with past cachets in this series, a participant in each event is shown. Also, there are five hand-painted stars -- each in one of the colors in the Olympic flag.

Duo First Day cancels were obtained -- a very nice Unofficial from Victorville, California and a First Day of Issue Official city cancel from Los Angeles. All in all a very nice set to conclude my Olympic effort which took in quite a few issues. Item #D802 - $22.00.

Two observations that may be of interest to you.

1. I'm not aware that many cachetmakers did hand-painted

cachets for all of the various individual issues for the 1984 games. I did -- so COLLINS FDCs with their hand­painted cachets and duo cancels could be a real "sleeper". Down the road a few years once everything has been catalogued and illustrated for this period, they could become "key" collection pieces -- again, simply because I just don't think comparable covers are out there.

Another possibility you might want to consider is that enough COLLINS Olympic material has been produced since 1978 to permit the formation of a very nice specialized collection. Some of the covers are still available from me while others would have to be searched out (the "hunt" is a fun part of the hobby) from other sources. I believe that it would be possible for a collector with reasonable determination over a period of time to put together a complete COLLINS Olympic set.

2. The second observation is that with this Olympic set,

every single First Day Cover that I produced during my "early period" (A101 Quiltmaking in 1978 to B901 Vietnam Veterans on November 10, 1984) has now been offered to collectors. They exist. They are limited in number and that number will shrink slightly over the years as a few are inadvertently damaged, lost or discarded. Many, many issues have been "sold out" of my stock and reindividual collections. These "sold outs" will occasion­ally surface from dealers in relation to number produced. Other "earlies" have not yet sold out and remain available from me. Month by month and year by year the remaining issues will also sell out, and one morning down the road and around the bend I will wake up and all of my "earlies" (1978 - 1984) will be gone. You now have a couple of options if you want to obtain some of these covers that are destined to always have a place of importance in First Day Cover collections. You could pick a couple that just strike your fancy. You could form a mini-collection such as Olympics, Famous Americans, Transportation Series, etc. You could pick your own topic such as Nature or International Themes or whatever. Or, you could start with the earliest still available and add five or ten covers a month and work your way right up to B901. What I want to stress is that with this D802 offering on the table, "there ain't no more COLLINS earlies coming down the pike". This is it. To be sure, I'll have an inventory of them for quite awhile, but day by day it will shrink. If you want some, put a plan, however modest, into action now and you'll be surprised at how fast your collection will expand. Thanks.