Arthur H. Bergen of Adelaide, South Australia, is the living legend of Australian cachetmakers. Born on 24 May 1914,he produced his First Cachet on 7 May 1935 for the New Zealand George the Fifth Silver Jubilee commemoratives.

Now 75 years since he made his First and 96 years young, his faithful Adana Eight-Five table top printer is still producing
covers.We wish you well, Arthur, and look forward to a souvenir (event) cover to mark your one hundred years on Planet Earth.

Attention Cover Collectors
Good luck in your goal for a complete Bergen collection. But be warned that it will take a lifetime to collect all of Bergen’s thousands of covers!

Fleetwood produced its First cover in August 1939 from New York. In 1969 Fleetwood was sold to Unicover Corporation of Cheyenne Wyoming USA. Fleetwood was then sold in 2007 to Mystic Stamp Company who continues to market Fleetwood covers. Fleetwood produced its first cover for Australia on 9 March 1977 for the Test Cricket Centenary issue. Then, from 1979 to the end of 1981, productions were continuous. Thereafter, only spasmodic FDCs have been done. These are all handsome looking covers, designed and sold exclusively in North America.

FLG, Empress and Cosmic cachets all originate from the same well-known cachetmaker in Salem, Oregon, USA.

Artists’ Frans and Linda Geerlings made their First Cachet on 3 January 1986 for Scott 2167, Arkansas 150th anniversary of Statehood. Now approaching a quarter of a century since their First, this husband and wife team have drawn, printed, airbrushed and water coloured thousands of covers in hundreds of design for their native USA, Canada and Australia.

Noel Almeida’s association with the Geerlings can be traced back to 13 February 1989 when Frans produced for Noel a cover for the 70¢ Cricket stamp of Australia.

Noel Almeida has published a catalogue titled Overseas Mailers FDCs of Australia. It is devoted to the first day covers of Australia produced by Overseas Mailers Limited of New York USA and comprises a complete listing of covers made by this American cover producer. John Barnard (Jay) Leach (1911-2003) owned Overseas Mailers.

In July 2005 the author wrote the cover story of The Cover Collector, the Journal of the Australian Cover Society, on Overseas Mailers. In July 2009 Mr Almeida won a Vermeil Medal for his exhibit at Melbourne Stamp Show titled Overseas Mailers Limited of New York, the first known national exhibit of this brand anywhere in the world.

Overseas Mailers was an important producer of FDCs of Australia. Unfortunately, the newly published hand book by the Australian Cover Society does not even mention the Brand, presumably because it is not the easiest cover producer to write about! Overseas Mailers involves spelling out the modifications and embellishments to branded Australian covers of Guthrie, Royal and Wesley, amongst others.

The approach taken in the Catalogue has been to illustrate (1) the Original cover (2) the Modified cover and (3) the Insert. The Insert is an integral part of the package but not many survived. So for each Catalogue Number there is a separate page with three illustrations.

75 covers of Australia are illustrated and each given a Catalogue Number and Value. Overseas Mailers’ last cover of Australia was produced in 1965, forty-six years ago.

Aggregate Catalogue Value of the 75 listed covers is $3,035, giving an average of $40 a cover. Collectors and Dealers have to find just one of these colourful covers and the outlay on the book is repaid with interest!

Why did we not know about these covers Down Under? The answer lies in the fact that Overseas Mailers was only marketed to subscribers in the USA.

Collectors in the USA can still find covers of Australia and the World, modified by Overseas Mailers, mostly languishing in $1 dealer’s boxes! Locally too, these covers are simply shoved in a box or at best segregated by the relevant Australian cover producer: Guthrie, Wesley and Royal, to name a few. Dealers and collectors alike are still unaware of the background story to these jazzed up American intruders!

Almeida collected these covers for 37 years but did not know the story of the Overseas Mailers brand until he did some research, aided by friends in the American First Day Cover Society (AFDCS) of which he has been a member since the early 1960s.

The Catalogue has a full-colour picture and a Catalogue Number and Value for each cover. The Catalogue is therefore a priced, numbered, chronological, fully illustrated listing of 75 Overseas Mailers covers plus 69 illustrations of the unmodified (original) covers.
It has 80 pages in full-colour in the international A4 size, with card covers, spiral bound to lie flat. The first edition comprises 100 numbered copies. The Catalogue is also available on CD as a PDF.

Printed Catalogue:
$40 plus postage to an address in Australia.
$50 plus postage by Overseas Airmail.
On CD as a PDF:
$30 plus postage to Australia & Overseas Airmail.

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