American Kidney Fund inserts bear faux stamp designs
I’ve written many times over the past few years about receiving fundraising mailings containing business reply envelopes bearing preprinted stamp-sized designs. That’s a little touch a lot of nonprofits appear to have adopted in an effort to improve response rates.
A May mailing from the American Kidney Fund contained something similar but ultimately different: two printed inserts designed to look like airmail envelopes, each with a preprinted stamp design.
American Kidney Fund insert with preprinted stamp-sized lantern designAmerican Kidney Fund insert with preprinted stamp-sized lantern design (reverse)American Kidney Fund insert with preprinted stamp-sized backpack designAmerican Kidney Fund insert with preprinted stamp-sized backpack design (reverse)
Unlike the BREs, these inserts were obviously never intended to be mailed, but the graphic designer responsible for creating them still have them a philatelic flair.
This sort of material obviously falls well outside a normal stamp collection’s boundaries, but one of the great things about our hobby is that we can collect whatever we like. At any rate, these are certainly among the more inventive fundraising mailing contents I’ve personally received.
We’re less than three weeks away from the official start of summer, and we’re feeling it here in South Texas. We’ve already had some high temperatures in the triple digits with “feels-like” temperatures 10 to 15 degrees hotter than that! Not exactly the sort of weather that encourages spending a lot of time outside during the middle of the afternoon.
Whether you’re also experiencing hot weather, or perhaps preparing for the winter months if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, the Summer 2024 Supplement (96.1 KB, 2 files, 7 pages) for The Philosateleian U.S. Stamp Album is now available for download. This update includes spaces for all United States postage stamps issued from early March through May, and you can print it at your convenience.
Please let me know if you have any comments or questions about this update, and thank you for your continued support!
We had family in town leading up to and over Memorial Day weekend, so I’ve been a bit slow with this post regarding new business reply envelopes that have arrived in the mail. I have three different examples to share!
First is an envelope from Disabled American Veterans. It bears three American flag designs; the artwork for those appears virtually identical to what was used on a 2021 envelope from the same organization, but without the simulated perforations that appeared on that older envelope.
Disabled American Veterans business reply envelope with preprinted stamp-sized designs
Next up is a BRE that came in a mailing from Edmundite Missions. This envelope bears four designs, all printed in blue: a Bible, a Chi Rho, a church, and a dove.
Edmundite Missions business reply envelope with preprinted stamp-sized designs
Finally, there’s an envelope from SPCA International that has four preprinted images picturing dogs and cats.
SPCA International business reply envelope with preprinted stamp-sized designs
And that’s it. Unfortunately, none of these BREs have actual cinderella stamps affixed to them, but they’re still colorful and better than nothing at all!
American flags appear on BREs distributed by The Fellowship
Only a couple of months after my most recent post about a business reply envelope enclosed in a mailing from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, I have another example to share from the same organization.
A mailing I received from The Fellowship last week contained three envelopes with four preprinted stamp-sized designs depicting American flags, one of which is illustrated here.
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews business reply envelope with preprinted stamp-sized designs
The other two envelopes were identical except for being labeled “June” and “July” instead of “May” and having different codes printed on the left side of their fronts.
While I’ve received other BREs in mailings from The Fellowship, the stamp-sized images on those have had imagery related to Israel or to the Jewish people. These are the first examples I’ve seen with purely American designs on them.
Minnesota’s Como Park Post is one of the latest local posts to issue a new stamp. The Saint Paul-based local post recently released a bicolored 3¢ stamp, and I received a copy on a cover postmarked April 22.
Como Park Post 3¢ stamp
The stamp has a woodcut design containing the letters “CCP” in the same color as the frame, while the value printed in the center of the stamp is a darker shade of blue.
As I’ve mentioned a number of times before, Como Park Post operator Tom B. carves the printing blocks for his stamps by hand. I can only imagine that is a time-consuming process, but you can’t argue with the results!
