Sep
22
Since January 2007, all new stamps and stationery items go on sale nationwide on the official first day of issue date. So reads the USPS Domestic Mail Manual, but local Post Office staff often do not know this policy and will refuse to sell stamps until the following day.
The policy change was stated clearly in the Postal Bulletin of September 11, 2008:
For your convenience, use this link to download a PDF of the relevant page, with highlighting, from this site.
Aug
2
When I ship maximum cards, sometimes they are irregular sizes for which I don't have a form-fitting plastic sleeve. Other times, the cancel is sticky enough, or the card slick enough, that I am afraid of smudging the postmark. In those cases, I make glassine sleeves like this. They're a bit labor-intensive, but it's a great method.
Jan
11
Thanks to Facebook follower Bruno Quaresma from Portugal for this useful list of references for pictorial postmarks from countries around the world!
Jan
1
The USPS has finalized price changes for 2017. They go into effect on Sunday, January 22nd.
The following table shows the product, existing price, and new price. Price increases are marked in red; decreases are marked in green; unchanged rates in black.
Be sure to visit the Postage Optimizer on this site to help you adjust you stamp combinations for the rate change.
| 1 | $0.47 | $0.49 |
| 2 | $0.68 | $0.70 |
| 3 | $0.89 | $0.91 |
| 3.5 | $1.10 | $1.12 |
| Postcard | $0.34 | $0.34 |
| 1 | $0.94 | $0.98 |
| 2 | $1.15 | $1.19 |
| 3 | $1.36 | $1.40 |
| 4 | $1.57 | $1.61 |
| 5 | $1.78 | $1.82 |
| 6 | $1.99 | $2.03 |
| 7 | $2.20 | $2.24 |
| 8 | $2.41 | $2.45 |
| 9 | $2.62 | $2.66 |
| 10 | $2.83 | $2.87 |
| 11 | $3.04 | $3.08 |
| 12 | $3.25 | $3.29 |
| 13 | $3.46 | $3.50 |
| 1 | $2.62 | $2.67 |
| 2 | $2.62 | $2.67 |
| 3 | $2.62 | $2.67 |
| 4 | $2.64 | $2.67 |
| 5 | $2.83 | $2.85 |
| 6 | $3.02 | $3.03 |
| 7 | $3.21 | $3.21 |
| 8 | $3.40 | $3.39 |
| 9 | $3.59 | $3.57 |
| 10 | $3.78 | $3.75 |
| 11 | $3.97 | $3.93 |
| 12 | $4.16 | $4.11 |
| 13 | $4.35 | $4.29 |
Oct
23
The Brother HL-3170CDW laser printer is a powerhouse printer for cachetmakers and other artists who want to print images onto envelopes, and is by far the best option in its price range, but you would never know it from the default driver settings.
So, you open your new printer, you lay out a large rectangular cachet, you set the page dimensions, you configure it to print on envelope stock, and you feed in your cover. This is what you get:
What is wrong with this? Let me count the ways.
All of these problems can be fixed, and the steps to do so I learned the hard (and expensive) way.
Your printer settings need to look like this:
OK, done all that? This is what you end up with.
Is the effort, practice, and configuration worth it? I say "definitely". This printer is a third of the price of comparable models and prints beautifully. You just need some patience to learn to use the Brother HL-3170CDW to print your covers.
Aug
31
Effective August 28, 2016, retail prices for First Class Parcels weighing up to three ounces will rise from $2.45 to $2.62.
Here are the changed rates, which can be found in full in a new new Notice 123:
| Service | Old Price | New Price |
|---|---|---|
| First-Class Parcel (1 oz) | $2.45 | $2.62 |
| First-Class Parcel (2 oz) | $2.45 | $2.62 |
| First-Class Parcel (3 oz) | $2.45 | $2.62 |
To generate a full First-Class rate table — and how to reach the values with the stamp denominations you already have — visit our Postage Optimizer and Rate Table Generator.
Apr
10
Effective April 10th, 2016, the exigent price increases for First-Class service introduced in 2014 were rolled back, resulting in an average 4.3% price drop across all First-Class services.
All stamps in the "Forever" category (including the multiple-ounce, nonmachinable, and additional ounce stamps) are subject to an equivalent devaluation. The nonmachinable surcharge has dropped to $0.21.
Here are some highlights of new rates, which can be found in full in a new new Notice 123:
| Service | Old Price | New Price |
|---|---|---|
| First-Class Letter (1 oz) | $0.49 | $0.47 |
| First-Class Letter (2 oz) | $0.71 | $0.68 |
| First-Class Letter (3 oz) | $0.93 | $0.89 |
| First-Class Letter (3.5 oz) | $1.15 | $1.10 |
| First-Class Flat (1 oz) | $0.98 | $0.94 |
| First-Class Flat (2 oz) | $1.20 | $1.15 |
| First-Class Flat (3 oz) | $1.42 | $1.36 |
| First-Class Flat (4 oz) | $1.64 | $1.57 |
| First-Class Parcel (1 oz) | $2.54 | $2.45 |
| First-Class Parcel (2 oz) | $2.54 | $2.45 |
| First-Class Parcel (3 oz) | $2.54 | $2.45 |
| First-Class Parcel (4 oz) | $2.74 | $2.64 |
| Postcard | $0.35 | $0.34 |
To generate a full First-Class rate table — and how to reach the values with the stamp denominations you already have — visit our Postage Optimizer and Rate Table Generator.
Feb
4
On January 29, 2016, the United States Postal Service issued "Botanical Art" stamps, depicting highly-idealized paintings of flowers taken from nursery catalogs of over a hundred years ago. These are not only beautiful but fascinating, in that they indicate the aesthetics of the day — what the ideal of perfection was thought to be.
I had an idea for a series of first day covers, but the information from the USPS was woefully incomplete:
Depicted on the stamps, top row from left: corn lilies, tulips, stocks, roses and petunias.
Pictured bottom row from left: tulips, dahlias, japanese Iris, tulips and daffodils and jonquils.
Those vernacular names do not even map directly to species, let alone provide the source of the images. I read through the art credits for the stamps, however, and saw that they were taken from nursery catalogs held by the Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden, which boasts one of the largest collection of such catalogs in the country.
So, I sent the library an email, asking if they could help me identify the plants. But the Public Services Librarian did far more than that. She sent me a spreadsheet with the following columns:
Oh, and just to go entirely above-and-beyond, the spreadsheet rows were arranged in the order the stamps appear in the booklet. Each pair of images below shows a stamp opposite its catalog illustration, and the links will take you to a digitized copy of the catalog from which the stamp image was taken.
Nursery: John Lewis Childs
Title: Catalogue of Bulbs and Plants
Issue: Fall 1891
Flowers pictured: ixias
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15121coll8/id/3226
Nursery: John Lewis Childs
Title: Childs' Fall Catalogue of Bulbs, Plants & Seeds
Issue: 1897
Flowers pictured: tulips
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44290234
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15121coll8/id/3290
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Garden Book : Seventy-Fourth Annual Edition 1912
Issue: 1912
Flowers pictured: gilliflowers
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42695545
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15121coll8/id/13108
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's 72nd Annual Edition Garden Book : 1910.
Issue: 1910
Flowers pictured: roses
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15121coll8/id/15407
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Garden Calendar : 1898
Issue: 1898
Flowers pictured: fringed petunias
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43827887
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Autumn Catalogue 1907
Issue: 1907
Flowers pictured: tulips
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42720886
Nursery: Farquhar, R. & J. Company
Title: Farquhar's 1910 Garden Annual
Issue: Spring 1910
Flowers pictured: dahlias
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42231623
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15121coll8/id/26972
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Garden Book : Seventy-Fourth Annual Edition 1912
Issue: 1912
Flowers pictured: Japanese irises
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42695717
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15121coll8/id/13279
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Autumn 1901 Catalogue
Issue: 1901
Flowers pictured: tulips
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42696550
Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Autumn Catalogue : 1899 Bulbs, Plants, Seeds, etc.
Issue: 1899
Flowers pictured: narcissus
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42696608
With this information, I was able to design my cachets:
