Fish as
Postage
by David Banks
First published March 2001: "In Depth", newsletter of The Tropical Fish Club
of Burlington.
Aquarticles
When the United States Postal Service issued a new stamp on June 24, 1999, they helped
to kindle a new interest for me. Well actually it allowed me to combine two of my
hobbies, tropical fish and stamp collecting. This new issue was a series of four
stamps depicting an actual aquarium including a filter and thermometer. It was a
very realistic depiction of a saltwater aquarium, the first stamps dedicated to the hobby
of tropical fish keeping in the US.
It just so happened our club was preparing to put on our annual show the weekend of
June 26, 1999, so lots of ideas started to flow when I realized these two events were
happening just 2 days apart. What I ended up doing was to create a special
cancellation in conjunction with the Burlington Post Office and prepare an envelope
decorated with the TFCB club logo and the dates and descriptions of the two events.
I had never been involved with creating a special cancellation, but the PO was eager to
help me out and we got it done with very little problems. But this was just the
start.
I also had learned of several other clubs working on similar projects, so I had to have
an example of each of those too. There were also special cancellations being done at
some of the public aquariums, not to mention all of the normal activities that surround
any new stamp that is issued. There is an official First Day ceremony in the
official city, Anaheim California in this case. There are also many small and large
producers of cacheted first day covers ( FDC ), envelopes that have some sort of pictorial
on the face of the envelope with the official First Day of Issue cancellation from the
USPS. These FDC’s can be very interesting as non-fish hobbyist try to represent
something on their cachet relating to the subject of the stamp. There were others
who obviously had an interest in fish that also produced some very nice covers.
These FDC’s were very easy to collect for the most part. The internet, and
primarily eBay, makes collecting something like this much easier than it use to be.
I have over 100 different FDC’s, some very simple, some created with inkjet printers
that show very colorful designs, and some hand painted. Because there were four
different stamps, some are sets of 4 envelopes, others have all four stamps on a single
envelope while others didn't distinguish and only have a single design with any one of the
four stamps.
Well my interests in fish as postage have continued to expand. I have stamps from
all over the world, some representing fish I have kept or are keeping. Some designs
are very realistic while others are not. Even the USPS has another stamp that
represents the fish hobby, in 1996 the bright eyes stamps were issued and have
representation of 5 different pets; cats, dogs, birds, hamsters and a goldfish! I
have FDC’s from other countries with fish stamps including several nice ones of Lake
Malawi cichlids. It is great to have a hobby, but when two hobbies come together,
you never know where it will lead!
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