Rocking Horse Farm, Purgatory Post end 2024 with new stamps
My first post office box checking of 2025 brought with it the last couple of new local post stamps of 2024.
First is a Christmas stamp issued by Minnesota’s Rocking Horse Farm Local Post. The $1 stamp picturing a snow-covered Christmas tree was issued December 23.
Rocking Horse Farm Local Post Christmas 2024 stamp
I previously mentioned this local post in a January 2024 blog post, but I didn’t know much about it at the time; however, the local post’s operator included some additional information with his most recent stamp.
Rocking Horse Farm is a historic farmstead in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and in addition to an 1850s log building hosts a music school and craft and sewing shops among other things. Rocking Horse Farm Local Post was established in 1999 and has released more than 130 different stamps since then, but over the past 15 years, the local post has issued only Christmas stamps.
The other local post stamp I received is from a more familiar issuer, New Hampshire’s Purgatory Post. The latest in Purgatory Post’s series of stamps commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, this 6-sola stamp celebrates the semiquincentennial of the Yorktown Tea Party of 1774. Purgatory Post issued the stamp December 27.
Purgatory Post Yorktown Tea Party
While I, like many other kids in the United States, learned about the Boston Tea Party, the Yorktown Tea Party didn’t sound familiar. It turns out it was a very similar event that took place in Virginia in November 1774 when a group of patriots boarded the ship Virginia and dumped two half chests of tea into the York River. From this stamp, I learned something new!
With 2025 under way, it’s time to show off the first three business reply envelopes of note for the new year.
First is the latest offering from Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch. This envelope features three stamp-sized designs featuring artwork depicting various birds in snowy settings.
Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch business reply envelope with stamp-sized bird designs
Second, my family has already received a couple of copies of this BRE from Shriners Children’s Hospitals. The envelope has three preprinted stamp-sized designs featuring an illustration of a hand with a heart in its palm.
Shriners Children’s business reply envelope with stamp-sized hand and heart designs
Finally, here’s an example that arrived in the mail just today: an envelope distributed in a mailing frrom Operation Smile. This one has three images picturing hot air balloons in a variety of colors and was accompanied by a sheet of hot air balloon return address labels.
Operation Smile business reply envelope with stamp-sized hot air balloon designs
As you can see, it looks like 2025 could be a busy year for BREs, so stay tuned!
2024 annual supplement available for The Philosateleian
2025 is well under way now, and I’m happy to announce the the 2024 annual supplement for The Philosateleian U.S. Stamp Album is now available for you to download and print. This update includes spaces for all United States postage stamps issued last year.
This update is provided as an alternative to The Philosateleian’s recommended quarterly update track. If you’ve already taken advantage of the quarterly updates provided during 2024, you already have spaces for everything, and there’s no need to download and print the annual supplement.
Although I haven’t quite reached The Philosateleian’s 20th anniversary—that’s coming up next year—2025 does mark the 20th consecutive year I’ve offered downloadable U.S. stamp album pages for free. Whether you’ve been using my pages for a month or for nearly two decades, I thank you for your interest, and I thank all those who have supported my project.
The single 14¢ American Indian stamp exactly pays the surface transportation rate then in effect for a letter weighing up to four ounces: 5¢ for the first ounce plus 3¢ per ounce for each of the additional three ounces.
14¢ American Indian cover mailed from New York, New York
A marking on the front of the envelope indicates it traveled aboard the SS Deutschland, a German ship that maid its maiden voyage from Hamburg to New York in 1924. An air attack in 1945 sank that vessel.
I have one other cover in my collection that shows the 14¢ stamp used by itself to pay this exact rate, albeit on an envelope mailed to China, but this is just about as scarce as they come!
Shriners Children’s squeezes in final BRE for 2024
We’re just about at the end of 2024, and there’s one more business reply envelope to share this year: one distributed in a Shriners Children’s mailing that I received in the mail last week.
Three stamp-sized designs are printed on the front of this envelope: one picturing a tree with heart-shaped leaves in several different colors; one picturing pink, orange, and purple balloons; and one picturing a pink butterfly and flowers.
Shriners Children’s business reply envelope with stamp-sized designs
As far as BRE designs go, these are rather muted, but they represent a variation I had not seen previously.
