Although I’m registered to receive USPS Informed Delivery emails each day, I was surprised by several items waiting in my post office box last week. One of the pieces for which I had not seen a preview image was this unusual first day cover bearing a copy of the Chief Standing Bear stamp issued in May.
Chief Standing Bear first day cover
For this FDC, longtime reader Kenneth M. used an ACLU postcard promoting an election between two candidates for district attorney.
Bat’s Private Post releases Devil’s Garden, Hermes stamps
I have a couple of new stamp issues from Bat’s Private Post out of Beverly Hills, California, to report.
The first is a 20¢ stamp picturing The Devil’s Garden near Palm Springs, California. Bat’s Private Post in February issued a set of nine official stamps featuring the same scene, but those were printed on white paper. The new stamp is printed on fuchsia paper and covers Bat’s fee for mailing a postcard or letter at a Mexico City post office.
20#162; Bat’s; Private Post The Devil’s Garden stamp
Oddly, the envelope containing the copy of this stamp that I received was mailed in April, but it only reached me this month, and I’m not even that far north of the border! Not sure where this was floating around in the interim.
More recently, Bat’s Private Post on July 18 issued a set of four stamps depicting a sculpture of Hermes by Flemish artist Giovanni Bologna.
10¢, 56¢, 76¢, & $1.55 Bat’s Private Post Hermes stamps
The 10¢ stamp covers Bat’s fee for transporting a local letter to a post office. The 56¢ and 76¢ stamps cover Bat’s and United States postage for domestic postcards and letters, respectively, while the $1.55 stamp covers Bat’s and United States postage for First-Class Mail International letters and postcards.
Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch sends sunflower business reply envelope
Incredibly, this is my first post of July 2023. I’ve had a busy month with some work travel and am still catching up on a few things.
One of the items arriving in my mailbox over the past few weeks was a mailing containing a business reply envelope from Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch. It has three preprinted copies of a stamp-sized design picturing sunflowers and, as you can see, a detachable reply form designed to be returned inside the envelope along with a donation.
Cal Farley’s business reply envelope bearing three stamp-sized designs picturing sunflowers
The flower design looks very familiar to me for some reason, but I’ve looked back through my previous blog posts regarding business reply envelopes of this sort and I can’t find anything that matches. There are plenty of flowers, though, so maybe that alone is making me think I’ve seen the image previously.
Jefferson Territory Ghost Post issues basketball stamp
It’s time to shoot some hoops at Jefferson Territory Ghost Post! The Colorado-based local post recently issued a .05-dwt stamp picturing a basketball along with the text “Denver Celebrates.”
Jefferson Territory Ghost Post basketball stamp
The design of this item reminds me very strongly of the basketball stamp from the 2017 United States “Have a Ball” issue, though the stamps in that set were of course round rather than square. The stamp is printed on self-adhesive paper, and is die cut with rounded corners. Printing on the reverse suggests this is some sort of commercially-available label stock, but I do not know who the manufacturer might be.
Why basketball? Although no release notes were included with the stamp I received, it’s no great leap of logic to understand that this stamp was released in celebration of the Denver Nuggets’ first NBA championship on June 12, the same day as the postmark on the cover I received.
Following a break of several months, New Hampshire-based Purgatory Post on June 17, 2023, released a pair of stamps commemorating the 50th anniversary of Skylab 2.
One of the 2-sola stamps depicts crew members Joe Kerwin, Pete Conrad, and Paul Weitz along with the Skylab 2 launch vehicle, while the other pictures the Skylab station and the mission patch.
Purgatory Post 2-sola Skylab 2 stamps
The Skylab 2 crew spent nearly a month in space, much of which time they spent making repairs to the Skylab station in addition to taking various measurements and conducting experiments.
Purgatory Post operator Scott Abbot notes that although the mission patch pictured on the second stamp reads “Skylab I,” it was the official insignia used for Skylab 2 due to internal miscommunication at NASA.
