We spent Thanksgiving over in Maryland yesterday at the home of my 94-year-old mother-in-law. And a fine time (naturally!) was had by all.

We made sure to do all the cooking this year so that she wouldn’t have to do anything more than eat and rest—she’s pulled together more than enough Thanksgiving feasts in her lifetime!

One thing we did while there was to gather together her stamp collection so that we could help her evaluate it. Back in the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s, Margaret had been an avid collector of first day covers, but it’s been many decades since she’s had the time to devote her attention to it. So we’re trying to understand her collection and figure out what she actually has.

As with any sort of collecting, many of these items can be appreciated only by the cognoscenti, such as with envelopes which mark the first day of air-mail delivery to certain small towns in Canada. But there are some items in the collection which can be enjoyed even by a general audience.

Take the first one that caught my eye, which commemorates a visit by the 11th Bombardment Squadron to Midland, Texas on May 12, 1931. Ordinarily, such an obscure military event wouldn’t excite me, but look more closely at the top-hatted, cigar-smoking character in the circle above. You might recognize him. That’s the character of Jiggs from the comic strip Bringing Up Father (also known as Maggie and Jiggs) with a bomb tucked under one arm. It turns out that the squadron insignia was designed by cartoonist George McManus, who in addition to creating that strip, was also a member of the unit.

That was the only comics-related envelope I discovered. But I did find a a couple of first day covers which had relevance to science fiction. At the left is an envelope mailed from Roswell, New Mexico on May 11, 1940, seven years before the UFO incident which made the town famous. Could it be that the real reason the aliens landed there was to check on their overdue snail mail?

The third envelope commemorated the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, and features an engraving of the World of Tomorrow.

According to the text below the image, “The theme of the fair was the picturing, by every means available, through the development of science, industry and the arts, the probable effects of these same developments upon the life of man in the world of tomorrow.” Sounds a lot like the theme of science fiction as well!

And I don’t know about you, but I live in that tomorrow they were writing about, and this is the first time I’ve seen a trylon or a perisphere in decades. What went wrong?

The rest of you can mourn the fact that you’re not zooming through the sky with jetpacks. Me, I want my futuristic architecture!

The final two first day covers I’m sharing here have nothing to do with either comics or science fiction, but they do celebrate great literature. Back in 1940, the U.S. Post Office issued a set of stamps celebrating Famous Americans, including writers, artists, composers, inventors, and more. Each first day cover was mailed from an important place in the life of the famous individual.

The two examples from this set which spoke to me the most were the envelopes bearing the likenesses of Samuel L. Clemens (whose envelope was posted on February 13, 1940 from Hannibal, Missouri) and Walt Whitman (who is postmarked February 20, 1940 from Camden, New Jersey).

Margaret managed to amass more than 1,000 of these in her years of collecting, and Irene and I will be going through them to make sure that we have a complete inventory, which we’ll then use to calculate their current value. One thing which makes this process more intriguing than it might otherwise be is that my mother-in-law kept meticulous records, so that we know exactly what she paid for each item at the time. Have their values gone up? Well …

As we initially compare her original costs to the current ones listed in the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, we’re finding that values haven’t appreciated as much as you might think over the course of sixty or seventy or in some cases eighty years. Though some may be worth more, there are many items which cost $1.00 back then which apparently only have a retail value of $2.00-$4.00 today.

I can certainly understand the appeal of stamps and coins, in that they allow you to imagine faraway places, and to feel a connection to history. But these price comparisons are a warning to anyone who thinks that his or her collection will bring riches someday. You’d better be doing what you’re doing out of the purest sense of love, because that love, in the end, may be the only true reward.

I’ll be sharing more further thoughts on that, as well as more first day covers, as they seem interesting to a non-philatelist audience.