D1601

French Revolution

Bicentennial

Collins Cover Announcement 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

This COLLINS FDC is chock-full of many valid reasons to add it to your collection. From the beginning of my description, let me stress that this is a "unique looking" COLLINS and one that will be very distinctive and eye-catching in your collection.

Let me begin with the lay-out format. The cover is essentially divided in half horizontally with the lower half devoted to the stamps and cancels and the upper half to the hand-painted cachet.

One of the large-sized forty-five cent Airmail stamps is officially canceled First Day of Issue at Washington, D.C. A second of the attractive red, white, and blue stamps has a super fine related unofficial First Day cancel from Frenchtown, New Jersey. The large stamps and dual cancels blend perfectly together to create a fine cover with philatelic significance.

But the stamps and cancels are only half of the story. The upper half of the cover depicts the "Storming of the Bastile by French citizens. It is a cachet in miniature which will amaze you with the flurry of activity and action in such small hand-painted detail. Soldiers with fixed bayonets try to repulse the crowds while another uniformed contingent strives to protect a cannon. Crowds mill and press in the streets while foot soldiers still hold a bridge as fighting breaks out under the archway below them. Smoke and flame leap from the high towers and ramparts of the castle-like Bastille and other surrounding buildings also have been set ablaze. For those who enjoy history, military themes, or plain old-fashioned delicate and precise cachet art, this cover is one for you. A day never to be forgotten in the pages of world history as the French people seek their freedom from the Crown in the dramatic Storming of the Bastille.

Two stamps, two cancels, and one marvelous cachet done in miniature -- a COLLINS cover that celebrates in fine fashion

the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Item #D1601. $8.25