LINN’S OPENS U.S. STAMP POPULARITY POLL; STAMPS AND STATIONERY TOTAL IS HIGHEST EVER
by George Amick
With a flurry of nondenominated rate-change stamps in December, the U.S. Postal Service pushed the total number of new stamps and postal stationery items for 2000 to a record 216, the figure topped by one the previous high marks of 215 new stamps and postal stationery issued in 1999.
A major factor in creating the record was the forty-nine postal cards produced during the year. The number of actual stamps issued in 2000—167—was well below the 195 of 1999 and the 178 of 1998, the two top years for that category.
The most significant philatelic event of 2000 was the appearance of the first U.S. stamps containing holographic images. The previous use of holograms by the Postal Service had been limited to stamped envelopes. Two hologram stamps were issued for the $11.75 Express Mail rate and two for the $3.20 Priority Mail rate. All were part of a set of fifteen Space Achievement and Exploration stamps issued in five souvenir panes to salute the World Stamp Expo 2000, an international philatelic exhibition held July 7–16 in Anaheim, California.
The panes, printed simultaneously from a single set of plate cylinders, included the first-ever U.S. circular and pentagon-shaped stamps.
Still another U.S. first for 2000 was a commemorative prestige booklet of ten stamps containing five varieties, each with a different denomination. The stamps depict historic submarines, and the booklet includes text and photos in addition to the stamps.
The 33¢ Los Angeles Class Submarine stamp of the set was also issued in a separate pane of twenty, with microprinting that distinguishes it from the booklet stamp of the same design.
The Submarine and Space Achievement stamps were among 140 commemoratives issued during the year, many of which were in panes containing multiple designs. These included two panes in the Postal Service’s Classic Collection series, one showing twenty historic American flags, and the other honoring twenty legends of professional baseball, with each issue accompanied by a set of picture postal cards reproducing the stamp images in the imprinted stamps and on the picture sides.
The Legends of Baseball issue was the first Classic Collection set to be issued in the self-adhesive format, with the verso text that is a characteristic of the series printed on the back of the liner paper rather than on the stamps themselves.
The Celebrate the Century series—the longest commemorative series in U.S. postal history—came to an end with two fifteen-stamp panes honoring the events, personalities, and pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Unlike the first eight Celebrate the Century panes, these two contained no engraved stamps. In fact, 2000 was the first year in which no commemoratives were partly or entirely produced by the intaglio printing process.
The Nature of America series got its second entry, a pane showing a fanciful scene from a Pacific Coast rain forest, with ten self-adhesive stamps that could be peeled out of the design.
One five-stamp set featured details of wood sculptures by artist Louise Nevelson. Another depicted astronomical phenomena photographed by the Hubble space telescope, with descriptive text printed on the backs of the stamps. A third quintet showed deep-sea creatures.
Veterans’ groups that had lobbied for years for postal honors for World War II hero Audie Murphy got their wish when Murphy was included in a block of four Distinguished Soldiers stamps.
The Postal Service sought to appeal directly to young collectors with another block of four stamps called Stampin’ the Future, which showed whimsical visions of the future by child artists whose designs were chosen in a nationwide contest. Another stamp foursome that was aimed at the youth market illustrated youth team sports: basketball, football, soccer, and baseball.
The Looney Tunes stamp for 2000 depicted Wile E. Coyote and his eternally elusive quarry, the Road Runner.
The Black Heritage and Legends of Hollywood series stamps honored Patricia Roberts Harris and Edward G. Robinson, respectively, and the Happy New Year stamp celebrated the Year of the Dragon.
Author Thomas Wolfe was the subject of the 2000 Literary Arts stamp.
As in the past, the Postal Service offered this year’s Celebrate the Century, Classic Collection, Looney Tunes, Nature of America, and Legends of Hollywood stamps in uncut press sheets for sale to collectors at face value. Uncut sheets were also available for the Space Achievement and Exploration souvenir panes and the Deep-Sea Creatures stamps.
For the first time since 1962, when the first U.S. Christmas stamp was issued, there was no new stamp in this category. Instead, the Postal Service announced in April 2000 that the 1999 traditional and contemporary Christmas stamps would be made available again for the 2000 holiday season “in a move to continue prudently managing inventories.”
New designs for 2000 had been made public, but their use would be postponed until 2001, the USPS added.
However, there was, for the first time, a set of Holiday picture postal cards. These incorporate the stylized deer image and four different background colors used on the four Deer Christmas stamps of 1999. The cards were sold in packs of five four-card sheets.
Among definitives, 2000 saw the appearance of the 60¢ Grand Canyon international airmail rate stamp with the correct caption: “Grand Canyon, Arizona.” The 100,750,000 stamps that had been printed for issuance in 1999 had been destroyed because the caption had placed the canyon in Colorado.
However, the Postal Service’s embarrassment over this jinxed design wasn’t over. After the stamp was issued January 20, it was discovered that the photographic transparency used to create its design had been inadvertently flopped, or reversed, when the printing plates were made. The image would have to be viewed in a mirror to be correct. This time, with the stamps already in circulation, the Postal Service made no attempt to undo its mistake.
The Postal Service announced in 2000 that there would be no more stamps in the Great Americans series, the largest definitive series in U.S. postal history. The Great Americans final count is sixty-three face-different stamps, issued over a twenty-year period. It is being replaced by a similar series that the Postal Service and collectors call the Distinguished Americans.
The two prototypes that were issued in 2000, a 10¢ Joseph W. Stilwell and a 33¢ Claude Pepper, were printed by a combination of offset and intaglio in two colors, black and red, instead of being single-color intaglio stamps, as the Great Americans were.
Both of the new stamps were illustrated by the same artist, Canadian Mark Summers, who uses a medium called scratchboard. The artist begins with a coated black surface and scrapes away areas of unwanted black, leaving white areas in a design that resembles engraving.
The Postal Service promised that the new series will “provide more design continuity” than its predecessor, but whether this means the portraits will continue to have the distinctive scratchboard appearance, by Summers or some other artist, remains to be seen.
The definitives that were issued December 15 in anticipation of the January rate change comprise six different designs in most standard USPS formats, including a pane of eighteen stamps configured for dispensing from automatic teller machines. Instead of bearing a letter designation, as was the case for each of the previous eight increases in the first-class letter rate (A through H), the stamps carry the inscription “First-Class.” Their permanent face value is set at 34¢ to cover the new rate for the first ounce of letter mail, to go into effect January 7.
The collectible stamps are Statue of Liberty, two coil versions (self-adhesive and water-activated gum) and a self-adhesive booklet version; Flag Over Farm, two pane versions (self-adhesive and water-activated gum) and a self-adhesive ATM-vended stamp; and four face-different Flowers stamps, in self-adhesive booklet and self-adhesive coil formats.
