NavalCoverMuseum:About

Mission of the Museum

The mission of the Naval Cover Museum is to be a digital archive of naval covers to aid in the preservation and research of this unique historical record and art form. To that end, the Museum is primarily an image repository glued together with lists and indexes. The Museum does not collect physical assets - just images and information.

Over the years the Museum took an inclusive approach and now allows a greater wealth of content as long as it is reasonably related to naval covers or associated ships/locations. This includes photos and documents from sailors and personnel. You never know when something that seems insignificant now will turn out to be significant later. Save for posterity.

Origins of the Museum

As a naval cover collector, I enjoyed seeing the wide variety of covers and, naturally, wanted one of everything. Once I realized there are millions of covers, my goal perhaps seemed a little unrealistic. Just how many different postmarks and cachets are there?

The few thousand covers I did have just sat carefully preserved in archive boxes on shelves. Pride of ownership is one thing, but I felt a certain dissatisfaction that they weren't doing anyone any good locked away like that. What should I do with them?

The concept for the Museum grew from the desire to answer these two questions. What if I made all of my covers available online and what if I could get other collectors to do the same? We would create an online catalog with a visual record of as many covers as we can get. That would allow for research as well as preservation. That's what we have and that's what we are.

The majority of naval covers may be locked away in private collections, but they don't have to be forever hidden.

Paul Bunter
Creator of the Naval Cover Museum

 

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