This week’s facts are a little bit of overflow from our last post on facts about the USPS. While our previous focus was the organization itself, we also discovered a lot of fun and curious factoids about our tiny friend, the postage stamp. Today’s facts are of course gathered from different sources, including Wikipedia’s article on the history of postage stamps and PostageHQ.
Did you know . . .
Before the postage stamps, all mail was paid for by the recipient, an inefficient and flawed system. Due to high postage rates, recipients often refused to accept their mail, which lead to the post office loosing money twice over, as failed deliveries meant that letters had to be returned to the sender. Just think — without the postage stamp, the practice of direct mail marketing would be impossible.
The first postage stamps in America bore a portrait of George Washington. They were issued by a private carrier in New York in 1842, who later sold his business to the US government. It wasn’t until 1845 that Congress set a national postal rate, and the first official U.S. stamps didn’t began circulating until three years later. The were issued in 10 and 5 cent form, with the faces of Washington and the first postmaster general of the United States — Benjamin Franklin. As of 2003, these stamps sell unused for $28,000 and $6,000 respectively. In 1851, postal efficiency resulted in a lower postal rate and a need to issue new stamps. Thomas Jefferson was added to the list of portraits for use on U.S. mailings.
The Civil War was a confusing time for sending letters. In the South, the confederate postmaster-general ordered all stamps returned to Washington, D.C., leaving post offices to revert to a cash system or issue provisional stamps until the Confederacy issued new stamps. The Union, in the meantime, decided to withdraw and invalidate all existing US stamps, and to issue new stamps, which took months. Citizens had four months in which to exchange their old stamps before they became worthless to everyone but collectors.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was a philatelist. This isn’t a dirty word — it means a collector and student of postage stamps. They’re the folks who can tell you the first perforated stamps weren’t produced until 1857, the first self-adhesive in 1974, and that the first official commemorative stamps were issued in 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Roosevelt was an avid collector, and is rumored to have collected around 1 million stamps.
Of the 25 most popular stamps for collectors, a huge percentage are devoted to popular culture. Stamps on the list include Lucille Ball, Baseball Sluggers, Jim Henson’s Muppets, Comic Strip Classics, Bugs Bunny, Marilyn Monroe, DC Comics Superheroes, Rock & Roll/Rhythm & Blues, and the Art of Disney, including images of friendship, celebration, and romance. The most popular is 1993’s Elvis stamp, with more than 124 million collected.
Obviously, that little rectangle pasted to your envelopes means more than just postage paid. Behind it stands more than a century of history and service to the U.S.A. Stay tuned for a post next week about how a simple postage stamp can work to increase the ROI of your mailing list campaigns.
