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Registered Mail Study Group

Registered Mail
Mike Ludeman
PO Box 2024
Denton, Texas 76202-2024
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The objective of the Registered Mail Study Group is to collect, organize, and disseminate information related to all aspects of the U.S. registry system to include, but not be limited to, labels, stamps, markings, and regulations. The Group has undertaken several projects, including a census database of known covers bearing registry exchange office labels, and a bibliography of literature related to all aspects of U.S. registered mail (see links below).

The Registered Mail Study Group publishes a quarterly Newsletter for all members of the Registered Mail Study Group. Membership is free, and you do not have to be a member of the United States Stamp Society to join, but we encourage you to join both. Send an email to the Chairman to be added to our Newsletter distribution. New issues of the Newsletter are distributed automatically by email to all members of the RMSG.
Click here for previous issues.

Original Study Group Announcement

Bibliography

The RMSG currently supports two cover census projects for the two forms of registration labels used by the United States Post Office.

The Domestic Registration Label, Form 1549A, Cover Census.

This domestic label was used on covers between 1907 and 1910, as part of an experimental program at approximately 70 of the largest post offices. The covers from this census are recorded in an online cover database developed and hosted at the Stamp Smarter website, which currently includes over 550 covers from 65 different post offices.

We currently have scanned images for about 75% of the covers with these labels in our database, and we continually search for new, unreported covers from the current list of post offices as well as new post offices which may have used these labels. Readers are encouraged to submit scans of any covers which are not currently in this database to the committee.

The International Registration Label, “Kugel”, Cover Census

In 1882, the Universal Postal Union issued a directive that beginning January 1, 1883, all registered mail to foreign destinations would be required to include a registration marking in the form of a specific handstamp or paper label. The United States Post Office Department opted to use a specially designed label, red or white gummed paper, at each of their exchange office which exchanged mail with foreign countries. These “exchange labels” were used at 27 of these “exchange” post offices, with the majority being used at New York, NY. These labels were used until January 1911, when the requirement for their usage was rescinded by the Universal Postal Union.

In 2000, Al Kugel and several other collectors compiled a preliminary census of all known covers with these exchange labels, and since that time, the RMSG has continued to collect information about additional covers with these registered labels. The original census focused primarily on the basic information about these covers, but in recent years, we have also begun to archive digital images of these covers.

The current “Kugel” Census includes updated information about registered covers from the original group comprising of the smaller 24 exchange offices (most of which are known with fewer than 100 covers recorded) collected in the past 25 years. In addition, we have now included the censuses for the two larger exchange offices: San Francisco, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, in the Table below. Due to shear volume, the census does not include labels issued by the New York Exchange Office. The information contained in this census is the basis for the Registry Exchange Label listing in the Scott Specialized Catalog of the United States Stamps and Covers.

The data from this census is available in two formats: (1) an online viewable table, and (2) a downloadable Excel format file. The census Excel file format has expanded since the previous update hosted on this page dated June 18, 2018, and the reader should be aware of the following changes.

First, the date field in the previous Kugel Census reports was based on the mailing date of the cover. Subsequent research has shown that the significant date for these covers should be the date when the cover was processed at the respective exchange office. For newer entries, this is the date which is now included in the date field. For some of the older entries, this field has been updated when an image of the cover was available, but in many cases, it has not.

In addition, three new fields for the three individual date components (day, month, and year) have been added to the Excel file, but are not visible in the online Table View. These were included to simplify the analysis of the covers from each exchange office by simplifying the ability to sort the census from a single exchange office by date.

In addition, to encourage contributions from the postal history community, we have added another new field which displays in the Table View that indicates whether we have an image of the cover, and if so, the “quality” of the image that we have in our image archive. This field has two components:

Image Quality: A = a high resolution image scan in color;
B = a low resolution color scan (as from eBay or auction catalogs); or
C = a photocopy from old auction catalog or similar source, or
NEED= indicates that we do not have any image of the cover.
Cover Component: (F) = cover front; (R) = cover reverse, or (FR) = both front and reverse are available.

A field entry of A(FR) thus indicates that we have a high resolution, publication quality (300dpi) scan of the cover, while C(F) would indicate we only have a photocopy of the cover front.

Anyone who can provide an improved image of any cover listed in the census is encouraged to submit it to the RMSG using the email at the top of the page.

Links (updated April 5, 2025)

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