American flag stamp puzzle completed

Years ago—at this point, I’m not certain exactly when it was, but I’m pretty sure that more than a decade has passed—my sister gave me a stamp-themed puzzle. I had never put it together, but over the past week and a half worked on it as time permitted, and finally finished assembling it.

The 550-piece puzzle features hundreds of tiny images of stamps overlaid on an American flag background.

I started by assembling the border, then the blue portion of the flag (since there were were far fewer pieces in that section). After that, I worked on pieces where the background was exclusively red or exclusively white. Finally, I filled in the gaps.

The most challenging aspect of this puzzle is that some of the stamps are reproduced multiple times. I would see part of a stamp on a puzzle piece and think to myself, hey, I saw the other part of that stamp a few seconds ago—but then discover that although I’d seen the same design, it was a different instance of the design, and the two puzzle pieces didn’t go together. Completing it was satisfying.

So, what’s next for this puzzle? My plan is to give it away in the next issue of the Philosateleian Post Horn so that another collector can have a go at putting it together.

Published 2021-06-27