Lot 10000 – THE EARLIEST RECORDED FRANKED LETTER FROM ARGENTINA

THE EARLIEST RECORDED FRANKED LETTER FROM ARGENTINA TO AN OVERSEAS DESTINATION

1858, 2p (“Dos”) blue, three large margins, just touched at left, paying the internal postage in Buenos Aires on 26 August 1858 entire letter to Genoa (Sardinia), datelined inside and with docket of dispatch, tied by blue “ponchito”, entering the British mail with “Buenos Ayres/AU 27 1858” double-arc ds on reverse (offset of the same ds on front), Anglo-French “GB/1F60c” accountancy marking, Calais transit (Oct. 4) and “10” due marking on front, backstamps of Paris and Genoa. The earliest of seventeen “Barquitos” covers addressed to a transatlantic destination, although its greater significance lies in the fact that this is the earliest franked letter of Argentine philately sent to an overseas destination; six covers are known to have been sent to Italy. A major rarity of Argentine postal history. The text in Italian, written by an Italian businessman after his first four days in Argentina, states trade challenges for this adventurous European businessman trying his luck in the New Continent; he states to have found the country in a sad state as the “discord with the Argentine Confederation paralyzes trade”, resulting in a partner to leave in brief for Paraguay in order to make business and get “some small profit”, and “a good business it would have been the wine and the pasta in long slender threads, which are sought after”. Cert. Moorhouse (2009), signed Drahn.

Note: It was previously considered the 18 September 1858 cover to be the earliest recorded, and this example predates by 22 days that usage. The letter presented here is illustrated in the Andrés E. Gazzolo’s “Barquitos Correspondences” census, but stating the date of the French entry cds.

Provenance: Mercury Stamp Company Auctions (New York), 10 October 1961, lot 226.