Joe Biden's Frank

My grandfather was an avid stamp and coin collector.  He had a tall, glass-front cabinet full of his stamp albums and coin books in his basement office in the house I remember him living at when I was young.

I collected stamps when I was a kid, too.  I certainly didn’t have an impressive collection, but I had picked up a few interesting things.  There was a small collection of late 1800s general postage stamps, some of the interesting panes that came out in the 60s and 70s, and a couple first day of issue covers. These included one from the Gadsden Purchase Centennial issued in 1953 and one of the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.  The former looked like this.

Mostly I just had what I could scrounge from canceled envelopes to try to fill out the empty spots in a stamp album.

The local philatelic society held an expo one summer and I built out a small display with a friend with some of what we thought were the more interesting examples. By comparison to the slick professional displays there, it was a little on the lame side.  But it did score us a 3rd place for the “junior” collectors.

It wasn’t a hobby that stuck with me in the long term, but it was fun while I was doing it.

My grandfather’s collection was liquidated by various members of the family after he died.  Something he had done to get particular postmarks on certain stamps was to send the postmaster of that post office a stamped envelope addressed to himself.

I used a similar technique to RSVP for a friend’s wedding (back when RSVPs were mailed), forwarding it to the Postmaster of Intercourse, Pennsylvania to be post marked there and sent along to my friend.

In lieu of postage stamps, there’s a practice called “franking” in which a hand-written note, signature, or other message can be used.  (In point of fact, postage stamps are officially a form of franking, as well, but it is not commonly what it means.) An example is overseas wartime mail that, during last century’s major conflicts, could be treated as first class mail by having “soldier mail” written in place of a stamp.

Members of the United States Congress can just use their signature in place of a stamp for official business letters.  This is commonly referred to as Congressional franking.  The same is true in other countries for various government officials.

At some point, my grandfather apparently sent a few self-addressed envelopes to the then-junior senator of his home state, Joe Biden.  He requested the envelopes be franked by Mr. Biden and sent back to him.  Here is the letter he received in response.

And, of course, here is the envelope he received the letter in.

These trinkets ended up in the collection of my grandfather's personal papers instead of his stamp collection. and were unearthed by a cousin of mine in sifting through mounds of such paperwork.

It was a neat find, and seemed like something semi-topical to write about.  Hope you enjoyed it.