The United States Postal Service has already wrapped up its announced stamp program for 2025, so we can print our final quarterly stamp album update of the year! The Winter 2025 Supplement (165 KB, 3 files, 4 pages) for The Philosateleian U.S. Stamp Album includes spaces for all U.S. and Philosateleian Post stamps issued since early September, and it is available for you to download at your convenience.
If you use The Philosateleian’s annual update track to print pages only once a year, my complete set of pages for 2025 should be available in early January.
Thank you as always for your interest and support, and thank you for using The Philosateleian!
BRE features Declaration of Independence, Liberty Bell, US Constitution
The latest business reply envelope to show up in my mailbox comes from a new source, the Alliance Defending Freedom. This yellow envelope delivered today bears three preprinted stamp-sized designs: a small section from John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence captioned “Bill of Rights,” the Liberty Bell, and the United States Constitution.
Alliance Defending Freedom business reply envelope
It may not be obvious, but this BRE is unusually large at 11″×4.75″. This is a big one!
As I’ve mentioned before, this sort of envelope is much more interesting when it has actual cinderellas affixed rather than only preprinted designs, but we’ll take it.
The Fellowship creates new business reply envelope
This week’s check of my post office box brought in a few pieces of “stamp mail” as well as a new business reply envelope from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
This cover bears four roughly stamp-sized preprinted designs: two in green depicting a candy cane, and two in blue depicting a Christmas ornament.
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews business reply envelope
The other pieces of mail I received were far more significant from a philatelic perspective, making it possible for me to add three recent commemoratives (including one of the Boston 2026 stamps) to my album pages. But as far as the “junk mail” goes, this item was the most interesting thing going this week.
Philosateleian Post Eel River FDC survives trip through mail almost completely unscathed
The release of Philosateleian Post’s new Eel River stamp is a few weeks in the past now, but I wanted to quickly share a scan of the first day cover that I mailed to myself.
Philosateleia 1s Eel River, Massachusetts, first day cover
As you can see, I used my mailer’s postmark permit to cancel the United States stamp. And for once, one of my FDCs made it through the mail with only the tiniest of scrapes near the right edge of my local post stamp. It’s not at all unusual for the mail processing equipment to shave a chunk off the surface of one of my stamps, so I’d say this one made it through relatively unscathed.
Shriners Children’s Hospitals use new Christmas-themed preprinted designs on BRE
My daughter and I made our regular weekly trip to check our post office box today, and there was the usual pile of nonprofit solicitations. Typical stuff for the most part, but there was one mailing from Shriners Children’s Hospitals that included a new business reply envelope.
Shriners Children’s business reply envelope with preprinted stamp-sized Christmas designs
The preprinted stamp-sized images on this BRE picture a snowman with a bird on its hand, a gingerbread house with candy cane roof, and a deer with stylized evergreens.
The art style used for the images is very much like that used for three other designs on a different envelope I received in August. I suppose you could say they’re from the same “issue”!
