Solo use of American Indian stamp on a registered mail cover
A number of years ago, I decided to begin seeking out examples of my favorite stamp, the 14¢ American Indian, on cover. Since then, I’ve accumulated a number of examples, but only a couple of non-FDC/philatelic solo uses.
Only a couple, that is, until very recently, when I was able to pick up this lovely piece of registered mail sent between two banks in 1924:
14¢ American Indian cover mailed from bank in Chicago, Illinois
This is a fine example of the 14¢ stamp paying postage on a two-ounce letter (at a rate of 2¢ per ounce) plus a 10¢ registration fee. On the surface, it seems like it would be the most easily achieved example of a 14¢ rate during the stamp’s period of use, but the registration fee increased from 10¢ to 15¢ less than two years after the stamp was issued, so maybe it’s not as common as I might have thought.
Purgatory Post’s 200th stamp issue features Chauncey Ryder painting
Modern local posts come and go with many of them issuing only a few stamps, but Purgatory Post is a definite exception to that. The New Hampshire based local post earlier this month released its 200th stamp issue, an impressive milestone indeed!
The new 4-sola stamp reproduces The Camp, a painting by Chauncey Ryder (1868–1949), a Postimpressionist painter active in the United States during the first half of the 20th century.
The Camp
According to Purgatory Post proprietor Scott Abbot, the painting pictures a small cabin in Cape Porpoise, Maine, most likely during the early 1920s. Scott says according to family lore, one of the three figures around the fire is his grandmother, so the painting has a family connection for him.
Scott has previously reproduced other Ryder works on his stamps, including a landscape depicting a New Hampshire brook.
Earlier this week, I walked up the street to the post office during my lunch break. There wasn’t much of a line, so I took the opportunity to pick up a couple of panes of the new O Beautiful stamps, and they are real beauties!
O Beautiful
You might be thinking, We all know you have a soft spot for landscapes, Blackston. Alright, so it’s true…but these stamps with their glossy finish really are nice. I even recognized a couple of the locations: Great Smoky Mountains (top row, fourth stamp) and Yosemite National Park (third row, first stamp—looks like a view of Half Dome from Glacier Point or somewhere in that vicinity). There’s a full listing of the sites pictured in the USPS press release about this issue.
My only complaint? The die cutting between the stamps does not extend through the backing, so I can’t easily break apart a pane of stamps for my landscapes collection. With some careful diagonal cuts I might be able to get a full set of singles out of the two panes I bought, but it will be a close thing.
Yozhgorod Zemstvo stamp latest cinderella from Alan Brignull
Letterpress operator Alan Brignull of England recently sent me a new cinderella stamp he created, a fantasy Zemstvo stamp picturing a hedgehog and apparent Cyrillic text.
Yozhgorod Zemstvo cinderella stamp on card
The stamp is mounted on a sort of approval card bearing the following text:
“The postal system of imperial Russia served only the larger towns and cities, but from 1864 regional authorities were permitted to run local posts. Several thousand different stamps were issued, such as this example from Yozhgorod, presented with compliments by the Popesgrove Philatelic Co.”
Alan didn’t go into detail about what inspired him to create a fantasy Zemstvo stamp, but it’s nicely done. It looks just real enough to make someone stop for a second look, but not so real as to cause confusion, and that’s just about perfect for a cinderella.
I don’t think it’s any secret that I enjoy making my own stamps; after all, it has been nearly 15 years since I started making stamps for my very own Philosateleian Post. It’s not often that I have an audience other than you and members of the Local Post Collectors Society, however, but that changed last week when I had the opportunity to share my love for local post and cinderella stamp production by delivering a presentation titled “How to Make Your Own Stamps” to the San Antonio Philatelic Association.
Sarah, my wife, tagged along, and got this picture of me explanining the cinderella stamp production process. (The back of my daughter’s head is in the foreground.)
Me presenting at last week’s SAPA meeting
I realized going in that not everyone would be interested in trying to make their own stamps, so I kept my presentation brief, but still tried to provide enough of an outline to give anyone who was interested an idea of where to start. I focused on three main areas:
Stamp design
Stamp production
Stamp use
My audience was very attentive, and there were several questions at the end of my presentation that I was happy to answer. (I found out that one of the other club members collects cinderellas and was already familiar with several of the local posts that I mentioned!) I also provided sample packets of my own work and stamps produced by others as a freebie for those in attendance. Overall, I thought it went well, and I was happy to hopefully be able to contribute a little something.
Several years ago, I wrote up a blog post titled “How to make a local post stamp” in which I went into detail on how to use Paint.NET to create a stamp design. If you’re interested in trying your hand at stamp creation, that’s not a bad place to start.
