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New Stamps Coming For New Rates

On April 9, United States Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., announced 18 new postage stamps and three items of postal stationery to be issued between early June and mid to late August in conjunction with the changes in postage rates scheduled to take effect on June 30.

Planned for issuance in early to mid June are five non-denominated stamps for the 37¢ first-class letter rate: a “USA FIRST-CLASS” Flag stamp in seven different formats and four self-adhesive se-tenant “FIRST-CLASS” Antique Toys stamps, depicting a mail wagon, steam locomotive, taxicab and fire engine, in convertible and vending machine booklets.

Denominated 37¢ versions of both these new Flag and Antique Toy stamps are scheduled to be in post offices by mid to late July.

Also scheduled for early to mid June release is a 3¢ stamp featuring a star highlighted in red, white and blue, intended as a make-up rate stamp for use with existing stocks of 34¢ stamps in paying the new rate until stocks of 37¢ stamps become more widely available.

But the six stamps shown here are just the tip of this summer’s philatelic iceberg from the USPS. A veritable blizzard of new stamps will accompany the June 30 rate changes.

USPS Media Spokesman Don Smeraldi said that plans are to put the non-denominated stamps and the 3¢ Star stamp on sale as soon as practical — probably early next month — well in advance of the June 30 rate change, to minimize inconvenience to postal patrons.

Stamps and postal stationery scheduled for release by or shortly after the rate change include a 23¢ Carlsbad Caverns postal card, illustrating a scene inside a cavern in New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park, a 37¢ Ribbon Star stamped envelope, showing five strands of red, white and blue ribbon forming a white star in the center of the design and 37¢ Official Mail stamps (this time apparently without microprinting) and matching stamped envelopes (no image of which has yet been provided).

Two new high-value definitives paying premium rates and depicting Washington, D.C., monuments, although reportedly not part of any formal series, will be released this summer to join the ones released last year: a horizontally formatted $3.85 Jefferson Memorial stamp paying the new 1-pound Priority Mail rate; and a $13.65 U.S. Capitol stamp paying the new ½-pound Express Mail rate.

A variety of other stamps also will be released to cover various steps in the first-class letter rates.

A 60¢ Coverlet Eagle stamp, depicting an embroidered eagle and shield and the motto “E. PLURIBUS UNUM,” paying the first-class rate for letters weighing under 2 ounces, is one of the few stamps for which we have an actual date and city of issue — July 12, on the opening day of the Americover show, in Oak Brook, Ill.

Her hometown of Appleton, Wis., will be the venue for the release of an 83¢ Edna Ferber definitive, paying the new rate for letters under 3 ounces. Ferber, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short-story writer, will be the fourth honoree in the Distinguished American definitive series that has included a 10¢ Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell and a 33¢ Claude Pepper (in 2000), and a 76¢ Hattie Caraway (in 2001).

The USPS has provided a description — though not yet illustrations — for new 37¢ and 60¢ Love stamps, currently intended to be released in August. The two stamps will feature “stylized block letters of the word ‘LOVE,’ with a heart design serving as the letter ‘V’,” according to the Postal Service.

One stamp scheduled before the rate increase was announced is the 5¢ American Toleware coil showing a painted teapot, to be released on May 31, the first day of the Napex show in McLean, Va.