In the 30's first day covers were more special than they are now.
I don't recall the exact date when it changed, but typically the first day cover could only be had at the issuing city or Washington DC. No grace period, no mail order.
And they were typically collected addressed. The most common thing was to buy a stamp add it to an envelope addressed to your home and hand it to the clerk. (They had extra clerks to handle the volume.) Some clerks wouldn't accept unaddressed envelopes. (It may have been against the rules at some time, again I can't recall the dates) Dealers would process several hundred to sell to people who couldn't make it to the ceremony. And those were usually stamped addresses or return address stickers.
By 1934 cachets- pictorial stuff usually on the left side of the envelope- became more common, but most were still addressed.
Unaddressed ones didn't become common until about 1950.
The baseball centennial stamp was average popularity, there were 398,199 first day covers. All from Cooperstown.
A few people would buy stamps and mail envelopes from other cities, but that wasn't all that common unless there was a nearby town with some connection to the subject. Like Lexington and Concord Ma.
So seeing a first day cover addressed to anyone at his home address wouldn't be odd except for it being Babe Ruth.
It's kind of neat that he'd have gotten a stamp as a souvenir. I wonder of he collected at all, and whether any of the other inductees got covers too.
Steve B
|