First Day Cover

Not sure when using a stamp on its first day became a thing.  It's not even really using it. It's getting the guy at the post office to put his cancel stamp on it without even sending the envelope anywhere. Then someone thought, let's formalize it with a matching envelope themed the same as the stamp.  As it turns out I do have some of these. Some of the more interesting are a set I have which traveled on the last old Ghan train service and a similar one where some guys took 1500 of the envelopes in a light plane and got them all stamped first at Port Augusta then Tarcoola and finally at Alice Springs all on the first day of issue and they needed every minute of the day to get it done.

One of these days I'll try a Ghan train ride