Letter Writers Alliance

USPS 2020 Stamp Preview

It's the most wonderful time of the year! The 2020 postage stamp preview for the U.S.P.S. is up. Linn's Stamp News has some bigger images; so you can really check out the new 2020 stamps. I don't hate it! I don't entirely love it, but I don't hate it. The Love stamp is a snoozer, and overall, the choices seem pretty conservative. Gwen Ifill is giving me warm fuzzies though. I was so tickled to see a favorite illustrator of mine, Camile Chew, had done the Lunar New Year stamp! The Harlem Renaissance and Thank You stamps are the stand outs for me. What's got you pumped for mailing in the new year? How many of these stamps are actually specialty printed with spot ink or metallics or lenticular and they JUST DON'T TELL US ANYTHING ABOUT IT? For example, this year's Spooky Silhouettes are foil. I had no idea. I loved them and now I have to love them more and I was not ready. You certainly cannot tell that from any of their marketing.

The Most Expensive Stamps In Collecting

This post brought to you courtesy of waking up late and forgetting I didn't write a post last night. Anyways, here's a round up of the most spensy stamps and why they are so coveted. What strikes me about them is that some of them are so banal-looking. The Treskilling Yellow that illustrates this post is a good example of that. It's valued at over 2 million pounds which I can only guess is eleventyjillion USD. (It's early and I'm late for work. I'm not doing a currency conversion.) I can easily imagine having one and not paying it any mind. Maybe that's part of the appeal.

Philatelic Events Near You

Don't have stamp collector's regret! Find that stamp show before it happens with the American Philatelic Society events calendar. I missed the big show in Chicago this year, and if I'd known about this calendar then, I'd've been much better informed. You can search by place or by date. Pretty snazzy.

Also, while you're there, check out the rest of the APS site. It's a good one. Plus, they want to hear from you! They're looking for submissions of stories and photos from the philatelic community with the "Stamp-Show and Tell" blog. They help you, you help them, everybody wins!

Canadian Stamp Alert

There are a lot of postal services in this wide world of ours, and this blog is not a philatelic-only focused publication. If it were, I'd spend a lot less time curating content. There are so many postage stamps and there are so many more every day. That said, I am pretty much annually enamored of a stamp release from our Northern neighbor. This year, the "Sweet Canada" set featuring regional desserts presented in a vintage recipe souvenir sheet has really charmed me. I have long heard tales of the legendary Nanaimo Bar. While I have yet to taste one, I am just delighted to see it memorialized in stamp form, in such a darling fashion. Well done, Canada Post! I don't love these as much as the Haunted Canada set, but these are pretty great. Who's got some favorite, recent International issues to share with the Alliance?

P.S. Photo from the Instagram of Snail Mail Superstar. She's great!

P.P.S. Full confession, I'm not a fan of non-regular shaped stamps. I find them difficult to make look good with mail art.

VEEP Stamps

My friend and pen pal Lillian sent over some really fascinating news from the world of print advertising. She says:

"Last month, I received a sheet of free stamps with our morning paper. Free stamps! What a delightful surprise! It came as a promotional insert for the new season of Veep with The Washington Post. A lot of the branding for Veep’s final season is postage-themed. Anyway, I thought you’d get a kick out of it.  Free postage as a tv promo is such a wild idea."

I love it! As far as I'm concerned, free postage stamps should be in all ad campaigns from here on out. Did anyone else get these stamps? According to Ad Age, the stamps were distributed to 10,000 Washington Post subscribers. The design is based in part on the famous misprint of the Inverted Jenny stamp which is a fun detail.

Thanks so much for sharing this with us, Lillian! Blog post suggestions are always welcome!

A History of Love Stamps

The Portland Stamp Company is a favorite of mine. They are making cool stamps with cooler people. Maybe one of them could be you? You can get pre-perforated and gummed paper from them as well as sending them your own designs to produce. They love stamps, as do we all. For the recent holiday, the "Chief Perforation Officer" Niko Courtelis put together a downloadable poster following the history of U.S.P.S. Love stamp issues. It's delightful, and I hope you all enjoy and consider The Portland Stamp Company for your philatelic needs.

Controversial Postage Stamps

Postage stamps are endlessly fascinating to me, ya'll. While puttering around in the digital realms, I wandering across this ancient (in internet years) listicle from Mental Floss elucidating ten postage stamp controversies. This is before the Liberty head gaffe or the destruction of extra Simpsons stamps; otherwise, I'm sure those would have made the list.

The story I was most surprised by was the engraver who hid a tiny Star of David in the stamp of Bernard Revel. "I placed a little Star of David on his mustache," he said later. "It was just a symbolic gesture. He's Jewish, I'm Jewish. No big deal." That engraver, Kenneth Kipperman (Content warning: Holocaust), is an interesting fellow. I'd've never known any of that if he hadn't put a tiny star on a stamp; so I'm going to profess that it was worth it.

Stamped Envelope Snowflake Saga

The American Philatelic Society Instagram account is a favorite of mine. They've always got something neat to say that I never knew about the wild world of philately AKA stamp collecting. One of their latest posts linked back to an older column from The American Philatelist, a magazine produced for members of the APS.  They had the lovely idea of pre-stamped envelope with a snowflake for mailing holiday cards. There was even a service to customize your envelopes with a return address. They'd letterpress it, even! However, it was like no one considered the fact that most greeting cards come with envelopes already and that the size they picked was kind of awkward. This seasonally appropriate philately tale is pretty representative of the U.S.P.S. stamp program to me. They have a cool idea but then fail to promote it properly.  Of course, since the envelopes were such a commercial flop, they are now a rarity. I've never seen one of these in the wild before, and I've seen A LOT of stamped materials.

LENTICULAR STAMPS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The U.S.P.S. really REALLY works hard at hiding their postage stamp light under a bushel. So, the Art of Magic stamps came out in August and they are delightful. They've got thoughtful designs and are a compliment to any envelope. As is my way, I posted about their release and ordered a few sheets to use in my October mail art as they have the right look for my Halloweird theme for the month.

But, just like how no one bothered to mention that the Dragon stamps had cool (hot?) red foil printed accents, the fact that you can buy a souvenir sheet of three lenticular Art of Magic stamps that feature a rabbit that actually disappears into a hat was pretty absent from their messaging. There's one sentence in the press release. You can't even buy them from the "Stamps" section of the website. You have to go to the "Collector's Zone" to find them. Here's a direct link to get your own. Why don't they have a gif posted of the stamp in action?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?! I swear, ya'll. 

Exploring Stamps YouTube Channel

I found myself fully entertained by all the videos in this Swiss gentleman's* channel on YouTube called Exploring Stamps. It was so fun to take a quick, vicarious trip to the recent stamp show in Columbus, Ohio. The videos are educational without being dry and engaging without being cheesy. That's a hard thing to manage, especially when dealing with a subject as unfairly maligned as old-fashioned as stamp collecting. I know WE don't feel that way, but the general public has many misconceptions about philatelists and epistolarians. *I'm pretty sure they're Swiss and I'm pretty sure they are a gentlemen, but maybe not. Corrections welcome!

P.S. Member Alyssabeth also has a charming YouTube channel called Paper Sounds she's started about mail and journaling. You may remember her from our L.W.A. Book Club on Neither Rain, Nor Snow.

P.P.S. Do you have any favorite, relevant video streams about mail or mail-adjacent topics you'd like to share? Please add them in the comments below!