I probably picked up my first Naval Cover around 25 years ago. It was a cachet from the U.S.S. Saratoga (CV-3). I thought it was pretty cool but after awhile I put it in an old shoebox along with a lot of other stamp stuff and put it on a shelf in my closet. For about the next 18 years, it and a small handful of other naval covers pretty much constituted my collection.
In 1970, the movie "Tora Tora Tora" came out and I became interested in Pearl Harbor. This interest grew steadily over time but it wasn't until about 7 years ago that I put Pearl Harbor and collecting Naval Covers together.
At first my goals were modest. I just wanted a nice clean cancel from each ship present at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. Five years of attending the local, semi-annual stamp show got me pretty close to completion of that goal (much much thanks to Kirk and Elsie Wolford of Kirk's Stamp Co.!!). Then the APS show came to town in the summer of '98...and I snapped.
I figured, what the hell, I'll start collecting cachets too. One of each type of cachet from each of those ships. After all, how many can there be? In the year that followed, my collection quadrupled to a little over 800 covers and my piggy bank took on an alarmingly anorexic look. How many indeed? After acquiring my 135th cover from the U.S.S. Pennsylvania (BB-38), and knowing of many more from that ship that I did not have, I knew I was in trouble. While attending another show, my own thoughts were precisely echoed when I overhead a fellow collector ask a friend: "I wish I knew how many different ones there are."
That's what I want to know too. I kicked around a few ideas and finally settled on one: a collaborative cyber-museum. First I'll build a searchable database and make my collection available to all. By making the Museum a collaborative effort, I hope to get other collectors to "contribute" their collections as well. Together, we may just end up with the closest thing to a definitive list possible.
That's my goal. I'm hopeful that it will cost less and take less time than trying to collect them all myself. I'll take a checkpoint every 30 years to see how things are going. However, after 150 years I am definately stopping -- no matter what. By then, it'll be time to go do something else.
Paul Bunter
October 12, 2000