Como Park Post issues Ukraine surcharge, wooden stamp

A mailing I received earlier this month from Como Park Post in Saint Paul, Minnesota, contained a couple of interesting new local post stamps.

The first is a “Support Ukraine” stamp picturing a woman and child on a background comprised of the flags of the United States and Ukraine. I initially reported on this stamp’s initial release in June 2013, but the 3¢ + $1 semipostal stamp has been surcharged to give it a new local postage face value of 5¢. The portion earmarked to support various Ukrainian relief organizations remains the same.

A surcharged local post semipostal stamp is an unusual thing, but the other stamp I received is even more unusual: it’s a 7¢ stamp printed on a thin layer of wood! You can even see the wood grain when you look at the reverse.

Pretty neat stuff, right? Various postal administrations around the world have experimented with producing stamps using unusual materials, but for local posts, this is very much out of the ordinary. It will be interesting to see how many of these show up on cover!

Published 2024-11-25