Finishing Grandpa's Naval Collection

[NorwichDad]

Here is an interesting hobby. A couple of years ago my two sons finished my father's collection of Naval covers of all US Battleships and World War 2 carriers. Naval covers are postmarked postcards or letters from US Navy Ships. It was a big hobby with teenagers before World War 2. My father when he was 13, 14 would send a letter containing a self addressed card to a carrier or battleship. The ships postal office would recive the letter, open it and then postmark the return card with the ships name and date. He would get the card in the mail addressed with the postmark such as U.S.S. Lexington October 3, 1941 or U.S.S. California April 4, 1941. Pearl Harbor came and the Navy began postmarking the cards U.S. Navy. He was stopped from collecting and then High School, US Navy, college then a family ended the collecting. He showed my sons the collection one day and they spent a better part of a year going on Ebay and buying missing ships cards. I gave them a limit of $5 per card. The boys bought about 80 cards. They printed Wilkepedia info on ships and put them in two binders with the cards bought and grandpa's originals. They gave the binders to grandpa. He looks at them often, noting some of the ships he had boarded. Here's a couple of ships covers currently for sale.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mr-Fancy-Ca...ltDomain_0&hash=item564a8c7108#ht_2815wt_1187

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Man-Feeding...ltDomain_0&hash=item3a75236fc6#ht_3325wt_1213

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Battleship-...ltDomain_0&hash=item3a73af5354#ht_1828wt_1187

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USS-LEXINGT...ultDomain_0&hash=item5d33d51161#ht_500wt_1202