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May — Spring Is Here
with Stamps Galore
This is the month when spring is finally with us, and a
month of stamps. The world’s first postage stamp — the
Penny Black — was issued May 6, 1840. The First of May is
Labor Day in much of the world, and there have been many stamps
to commemorate it. And in the United States May is, and will probably
remain, a month of many new stamps, due to the scheduled rate change.
Although the “24/7” flag stamps were issued in advance,
on April 18, followed by the postcard rate 27-cent tropical fruit
stamps on April 25 and the 42-cent Purple Heart on April 30, the
bulk of the new stamp issues will be released this month.
The new offerings begin with the 42-cent Elk
stamped envelope on May 2, to be followed by the 27-cent Corinthian
capital on May 12. Also on May 12 will be issued the 59-cent
James A. Michener and the 76-cent Edward Trudeau stamps, and
the Mt. Rushmore Priority Mail Envelope. Two new international
rate stamps, the 72-cent 13 Mile Woods, New Hampshire, and the
94-cent St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, will be issued May 16.
May also will see the release of the 42-cent Frank Sinatra (May
13), the 42-cent Minnesota Statehood card, and the 62-cent Dragonfly
stamps (May 18).
The new Forever stamp also will be released on
May 12. One might ask why a new (2008) Forever stamp? Apparently
the USPS wants to track the usage of the different cost “Forevers.”
 This is a busy time for the Post Office and for
those of us who collect U.S. stamps. And, of course, the month
is full of stamp shows and bourses, including four WSP shows:
the Philatelic Show (Boston, Massachusetts), Ropex, (Rochester,
New York), Rocky Mountain Stamp Show (Denver, Colorado) and Nojex
(Secausus, New Jersey) — with Westpex (San Francisco, California)
just before and Napex (McLean, Virginia) just after the month
of May. Three of these plan to have USPS First Days. I hope all
of you are going to at least one such event this month.
Progress
Have you noticed what’s new at the APS? Part of
each issue of The American Philatelist now
is online. Our regular columns are now available for you to read
as of the first of each month. In addition, we are continuing
to place articles from past issues of the AP on our website,
with a new one each month and a growing archive. New members
in particular will enjoy discovering this wealth of reading;
old members will have a chance to discover articles they might
have missed — all on our website for you to download at
your leisure. For the present time, this feature is available
to anyone who visits our site; however, when we get the new site
up and running, it will only be accessible to members — one
of the privileges of belonging to the APS.
Our Sales Division is working on a means of allowing
our overseas members to participate in our sales circuits. While
the new procedure is still not quite ready, it promises to address
a problem that has long vexed our members.
Our monthly e-mail newsletter is coming soon — hopefully
during this month. We want you to know what is happening at the
APS, and in the hobby, on a timely basis. While by its very nature
a printed magazine has a significant time lag before it reaches
readers’ hands (I am writing this in March), and has a
fixed amount of space available, the e-newsletter is designed
to get around these limitations. I hope you will enjoy it.
Unsoakable Stamps
We sent a letter on this subject to Postmaster General
Potter in January that also was printed in the March issue of The
American Philatelist (pp. 247–48). Postmaster Potter
replied to this letter in February. His letter reads, in part:
Our Stamp Services manufacturing team is very
much aware of the issue and the impact it is having on the stamp-collecting
community. We publicly stated that we have not given up on the
idea of producing self-adhesive stamps that can be removed from
their covers. Unfortunately, there are a number of factors making
it increasingly difficult for us to maintain a water-soluble
layer on our stamp paper. Because of this, we cannot guarantee
that all future postage stamps will be easy to soak off of an
envelope.
In the meantime, we will continue to work closely
with our stamp printers and the paper industry to search for
a solution that will be acceptable to our customers and the collecting
community.
I appreciate the opinion of the APS Board of
Directors and look forward to the continued strong relationship
our two organizations share.
In the April AP,
I made the following observation: “For the USPS it is a
matter of cost — while their postage rates are increasing
at the rate of inflation (about two percent is the most recent
number), their volume has been falling at twice that rate, so
that their revenues are decreasing. Thus the need to contain
costs — which, by one account, includes the water-soluble
layer of our stamps.” Beyond this, there seems to be another
factor to be considered: stamps that cannot be soaked intact
off an envelope cannot be re-used. Remember the security experiments
of the nineteenth century, especially the grills? Once again
there seems to be a substantial trade in stamps that have been
used, but not cancelled. Although we often see stamps that were
missed by the cancelling machine simply obliterated with a ballpoint
pen, many more continue to arrive with no cancel at all. If,
however, the stamp cannot be soaked off, it cannot be re-used.
This was probably a factor in the decision of the USPS to omit
that soakable layer requirement in their recent stamp printing
contracts.
So, if the U.S. stamps we collect are destined
to stay on the envelope — or, in the case of mint stamps,
on the backing, then we need to consider the archival properties
of the self-stick “gum” layer. We all remember the
1974 Mt. Vernon Weathervane Christmas stamp and the discoloration
that has turned up in the intervening years, and apparently so
does the USPS.
They tell us that the self-stick gum formulation
has not changed since 1989 (the Eagle self-stick stamps), and
that it has passed all the testing that has been done. The USPS
is, however, presently engaged in another series of tests stressing
the gum from the standpoint of what happens if, for instance,
the self-sticks are carried in a wallet for a protracted period
of time? Issues such as temperature, humidity, rubbing, etc.,
are part of that sort of testing. Now, with the Forever stamps
intended to be out there for many years, this is even more important.
The USPS is confident that the gum will withstand the testing,
but wants to be absolutely certain.
Moreover, they tell us, the self-stick gum should
serve as an effective inert barrier to the acid content of envelope
paper if stamps are stored in cool dry conditions, which certainly
are the ideal conditions that we collectors should strive to
employ.
So, let’s start thinking about clipping
around the cancelled stamp and mounting it in an album or stock
book. Those of us who collect recent mint U.S. stamps are already
cutting around the backing paper. Like cut-squares of days gone
by, this may end up being the norm in the years to come. Nonetheless,
we will continue to keep this matter on the agenda as we discuss
collector concerns with the USPS.
Summer Activities
Finally, make your plans to attend the APS Summer Seminar on
Philately in Bellefonte (June 22–27) and then StampShow
in Hartford (August 14–17). And don’t forget to
check out the American Philatelist reprints
on our website (www.stamps.org/Services/ser_ArchivedArticles.htm).
New this month is Dr. James W. Milgram’s “The Transcontinental
Railroad: A Meeting of East and West” from the February
2003 issue of the AP (pages 126–135).
And above everything else, remember to share
THE JOY OF PHILATELY! |
