New 2021 Priority Mail Express Stamp

Nothing has been announced, but if past practice holds, a new  large-format stamp featuring a National Park or natural wonder will be issued for this rate on Sunday, January 24, 2021, the date the rate goes into effect. There will not be a first day ceremony and in-person cancellations will be hard to obtain.

Updated December 26th:

Since the Express Mail flat rate charge is not changing, Linn’s Stamp News does not expect a new stamp to be issued. This listing has been removed from the VSC’s 2021 U.S. Stamp Program.

Castillo de San Marcos Priority Mail (2021)

Nothing has been announced, but if past practice holds, a new  large-format Priority Mail stamp will be issued for this rate on Sunday, January 24, 2021, the date the rate goes into effect. There will not be a first day ceremony and in-person cancellations will be hard to obtain.

Updated December 26th:

Linn’s Stamp News reports in its January 11th edition (online December 26th) that this $7.95 stamp will feature the Castillo de San Marcos, located in St. Augustine, FL. It will be the 25th in the “American Landmark” series of “shipping rate” stamps.

From its official website, “Built by the Spanish in St. Augustine to defend Florida and the Atlantic trade route, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument preserves the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States and interprets more than 450 years of cultural intersections.”

Wikipedia link


From this point on, the most recent entries are at the top.

Updated January 29th:
Technical Specifications:

Issue: Castillo de San Marcos Stamp
Item Number: 121300
Denomination & Type of Issue: $7.95 Priority Mail® Rate
Format: Pane of 4 (1 design)
Series: N/A
Issue Date & City: January 24, 2021, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Art Director: Greg Breeding, Charlottesville, VA
Designer: Greg Breeding, Charlottesville, VA
Artist: Dan Cosgrove. Chicago, IL
Modeler: Joseph Sheeran
Manufacturing Process: Offset, Microprint
Printer: Ashton Potter (USA) Ltd. (APU)
Press Type: Muller A76
Stamps per Pane: 4
Print Quantity: 5,500,000 stamps
Paper Type: Nonphosphored Type III, Block Tag
Adhesive Type: Pressure-sensitive
Colors: Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
Stamp Orientation: Horizontal
Image Area (w x h): 1.42 x 1.085 in/36.068 x 27.559 mm
Overall Size (w x h): 1.56 x 1.225 in/39.624 x 31.115 mm
Full Pane Size (w x h): 4.12 x 3.45 in/104.648 x 87.63 mm
Plate Size: 168 stamps per revolution
Plate Number: “P” followed by four (4) single digits
Marginal Markings:
Front: Plate number in two corners of pane
Back: ©2020 USPS • USPS Logo • Barcode (121300) printed behind each stamp • Plate position diagram (7) • Promotional text

Updated January 6th:
Here is the Digital Color first-day Postmark for this issue:It measures 2.68″ x 1.61″. The “standard killerbar” (“FIRST DAY OF ISSUE”) postmark will also be offered.

Note: Because of the high denomination, there is no minimum number requirement for cancellations submitted to Cancellation Services.

Updated December 31st from the Postal Bulletin:

On January 24, 2021, in St. Augustine, FL, the United States Postal Service® will issue the Castillo de San Marcos Priority Mail® stamp in one design, in a pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) pane of four stamps (Item 121300). This stamp will go on sale nationwide January 24, 2021, and must not be sold or canceled before the first-day-of-issue.

The latest Priority Mail stamp celebrates the oldest masonry fortification in the United States, the Castillo de San Marcos, in St. Augustine, Florida. The stamp art features a digital illustration of the fortress based on a contemporary photograph. With a view toward the northeast corner of the fortress, the artwork captures it in the golden glow of sunrise over Matanzas Bay. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp with art created by Dan Cosgrove.

No automatic distribution for tem 121300, $7.95 Castillo de San Marcos Priority Mail PSA Pane of Four

How to Order the First-Day-of-Issue Postmark:
Customers have 120 days to obtain the first-day-of-issue postmark by mail. They may purchase new stamps at their local Post Office™ or at The Postal Store® website at usps.com/shop. They must affix the stamps to envelopes of their choice, address the envelopes (to themselves or others), and place them in a larger envelope addressed to:

FDOI – Castillo de San Marcos Stamp
USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services
8300 NE Underground Drive, Suite 300
Kansas City, MO 64144-9900

After applying the first-day-of-issue postmark, the Postal Service™ will return the envelopes through the mail. There is no charge for the postmark up to a quantity of 50. There is a 5-cent charge for each additional postmark over 50. All orders must be postmarked by May 24, 2021.

Technical Specifications are not yet available.

Errors, Freaks & Oddities Collectors’ Club

The EFOCC was founded in 1986 in recognition of the fact that collecting printing varieties had become its own specialty, not just adding odd stamps to a normal collection. The international membership is made up of collectors who seek EFOs to make their country album more interesting, and collectors who enjoy studying production methods and the philatelic material that results when it doesn’t work properly.

EFOCC has a 28-page full-color quarterly, The EFO Collector, with feature articles, new discoveries, member information, free member ads, club activities, and an EFO auction in each issue. The EFOC and the broad and deep website, www.efocc.org, are managed by club Vice President Cemil Betanov, from New Hyde Park, NY.

Membership is $20 a year in the U.S. An application form is on the Society website.

Hotchner: Pay Attention!

Seeing is believing
by John M. Hotchner

One of my favorite U.S. issues was the creative World at War series of five sheetlets released over five years from 1991-1995, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of World War II. An example of the 1941 sheet (Sc. 2559) is shown here.

Combining ten images per sheet with a map showing where 1941’s most important events took place was pure genius. And the people who made the series happen were Jack Williams, the Postal Service project manager, Howard Paine, the Art Director and typographer, and William Bond, the designer.

Take a look at the 1941 sheet. Do you notice anything wrong? I’m reading a book now titled Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. One of the many points it makes in discussing how our brains work is that our default is to see what we expect to see. I asked twelve stamp collector friends what was wrong with the sheet shown here. None identified the problem. Several studied the sheet for over a minute.

This is not a criticism of them. None were error specialists and they are not oriented toward looking for errors, or what might be wrong with a stamp. If you have identified the fact that there is no intaglio inscription saying “29 USA” on each stamp, you get a gold star. Compare this sheet with the normal one below and the error will become obvious. Once you know what to look for it is instantaneously to see in the fourth stamp in the top row; the one with FDR and Winston Churchill.

Only two of these sheets are reported. It seems only one pane with two sheets escaped the printing operation and were sold. It likely happened when two panes together, instead of one, went through the press adding the engraving. The one underneath did not get the engraved image.

The current Scott Specialized Catalogue values the error at $6500. Had you been the lucky buyer, would you have noticed the error?

This is my point. Some varieties are obvious: stamps you can’t tear apart to use (imperfs), misperfs with a split design, inverted airplanes, even some missing colors. But unless you have trained yourself to look for the more subtle varieties, you may use a stamp worth hundreds or thousands of dollars on your electric bill!

How to train yourself? First and foremost, pay attention. Know what the normal stamp should look like and if you see anything you are not certain about, compare it with the normal. It also helps to know what exists. For example, the 1917 perf 11 flat plate carmine 2¢ George Washington, see the strip nearby, exists with the denomination “5” instead of “2”, as you will note on the middle stamp. This error is found on one or two stamps in some sheets of 100 of the perf. 10 (Scottt #467) and perf. 11 printings (Scott #505). You can go through tens of thousands of these cheap stamps and not find one, but if you do, you will be well rewarded as the catalogue value for a used single is $600.

A good way to orient yourself to errors and other varieties is to join the Errors, Freaks & Oddities Collectors’ Club. Information is below, or on its website.


Should you wish to comment on this editorial, or have questions or ideas you would like to have explored in a future column, please write to John Hotchner, VSC Contributor, P.O. Box 1125, Falls Church, VA 22041-0125, or email, putting “VSC” in the subject line.

Or comment right here, below.


The EFOCC was founded in 1986 in recognition of the fact that collecting printing varieties had become its own specialty, not just adding odd stamps to a normal collection. The international membership is made up of collectors who seek EFOs to make their country album more interesting, and collectors who enjoy studying production methods and the philatelic material that results when it doesn’t work properly.

EFOCC has a 28-page full-color quarterly, The EFO Collector, with feature articles, new discoveries, member information, free member ads, club activities, and an EFO auction in each issue. The EFOC and the broad and deep website, www.efocc.org, are managed by club Vice President Cemil Betanov, from New Hyde Park, NY.

Membership is $20 a year in the U.S. An application form is on the Society website.

USPS To Raise Priority, Express Rates In 2021

The U.S. Postal Service has much more leeway to adjust its prices for shipping services in which it is in competition with independent companies than it does for regular mail.

[press release]
U.S. Postal Service Announces New Domestic Competitive Prices for 2021

The United States Postal Service filed notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) today of price changes to take effect Jan. 24, 2021.

The proposed prices, approved by the Postal Service Governors, would raise Shipping Services product prices approximately 3.5 percent for Priority Mail service, and 1.2 percent for Priority Mail Express service. Shipping Services price increases vary by product. Although Mailing Services price increases are based on the consumer price index, Shipping Services prices are primarily adjusted according to market conditions. The Governors believe these new rates will keep the Postal Service competitive while providing the agency with needed revenue.

If favorably reviewed by the PRC, the new prices will include an increase in the price of a Small Flat-Rate Box to $8.45. The Medium Flat-Rate Box would increase to $15.50, the Large Flat-Rate Box would increase to $21.90 and the price of the APO/FPO Large Flat-Rate Box would increase to $20.40. Regular Flat-Rate Envelopes, Legal Flat-Rate Envelopes, and Padded Flat-Rate Envelopes would increase to $7.95, $8.25, and $8.55 respectively.

The Priority Express Mail flat-rates will remain the same.

The proposed domestic Priority Mail Flat Rate Retail price changes are:

 

Current

 

Planned Increase

Small Flat-Rate Box $8.30 $8.45
Medium Flat-Rate Box $15.05 $15.50
Large Flat-Rate Box $21.10 $21.90
APO/FPO Large Flat-Rate Box $19.60 $20.40
Regular Flat-Rate Envelope $7.75 $7.95
Legal Flat-Rate Envelope $8.05 $8.25
Padded Flat-Rate Envelope $8.40 $8.55

The Postal Service has some of the lowest letter-mail postage rates in the industrialized world and continues to offer a great value in shipping. Unlike some other shippers, the Postal Service does not add surcharges for fuel, residential delivery or regular Saturday delivery.

The PRC will review the prices before they are scheduled to take effect. The complete Postal Service price filings with prices for all products can be found on the PRC site under the Daily Listings section at prc.gov/dockets/daily. For the Shipping Services filing, see Docket No. CP2021-28. The price change tables are also available on the Postal Service’s Postal Explorer website at pe.usps.com/PriceChange/Index.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

Year of the Ox (Lunar New Year) (UK 2020-21)

[from Royal Mail]
Issue Date: 8 December 2020

Lunar New Year of the Ox Generic Sheet with 20 First Class Smilers stamps featuring fireworks images. [Larger version below]

Labels showcase Chinese New Year celebrations in named cities across the UK.

The labels are designed by hat-trick design and feature paper cut-outs both on the bright red background of the sheet and the labels representing the five elements of Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth.

The pictorial labels depict Lunar New Year festivities taking place in five UK locations – Liverpool, Edinburgh, Swansea, London and Belfast, whilst the remainder show five Lunar New Year related images.

The Year of the Ox runs from 12 February 2021 to 31st January 2022.

The Ox is the second in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac and if you’re born under this sign you’re believed to be intelligent, dependable, honest and hardworking.

Christmas (Australia 2020)

Australia’s annual Christmas stamp issue celebrates the Christmas holiday, highlighting both traditional and secular themes.

This year’s traditional Christmas stamps feature the art of Leopoldine Mimovich OAM (1920–2019). A celebrated sculptor and artist, Mimovich received many honours, including an Order of the Medal of Australia (OAM) in 1985 for her service to sculpture. Her work is represented in many private collections, churches and public buildings in Australia and throughout the world, including the United Nations Art Collection in New York. The illustrations featured on the three non-religious or secular stamps are by Melbourne-based designer and illustrator Sarah Allen. Each stamp design incorporates native Australian flora and fauna.

The five stamps in the set are:

  • 65c Wreath (secular)
  • 65c Stocking (secular)
  • 65c Mother and Child (religious)
  • $2.20 Pudding (secular)
  • $2.20 Holy Family (religious)

Technical Specifications:
Issue date: 30-October-2020*
Issue withdrawal date: 31-December-2021
Denomination: 65c x 3, $2.20 x 2
Stamp illustrations (secular): Sarah Allen
Stamp design (secular): Andrew Hogg
Stamp artwork (religious): Leopoldine Mimovitch
Stamp design (religious): Jo Muré, Australia Post Design Studio
Product design: Jo Muré, Australia Post Design Studio
Paper: gummed: Tullis Russell
Paper: self-adhesive: Arconvert Securpost
Printer (secular): Egotrade
Printer (religious): RA Printing
Printing process: Offset lithography
Stamp size (mm): 26 x 37.5
Minisheet size (mm): 135 x 50
Sheetlet size (mm): 120 x 192
Perforations: 14.6 x 13.86
Sheet layout: Module of 50
FDI Postmark: Merrylands NSW 2160
FDI withdrawal date: 31-January-2021

Vatican: Joint Christmas Issue with Austria (2020)

[press release, via Google Translate]

The Light of Peace from Bethlehem is the inspiring theme of the Vatican issue dedicated to Christmas 2020, including, in addition to the traditional stamps and booklet, also a leaflet in joint issue with Austria. In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem there is an oil lamp that has been burning perpetually for many centuries, fueled by oil donated in turn by all the Christian nations of the earth. Every year in December, just before Christmas, a child selected from among the Austrian scout groups for his particular commitment in the social field, draws from that flame is the light that will be spread throughout the planet as a symbol of peace and brotherhood among peoples, placing it near the nativity scenes of families and churches. This tradition began in 1986 as part of the Christmas charity initiative “Licht ins Dunkel” – Light in the darkness – organized by the Austrian radio and television broadcaster ORF in Linz and aimed to the collection of spontaneous offers in support of disabled children, socially marginalized, but also of needy foreigners.

The stamps that make up both the joint leaflet and the Vatican series and booklet portray the Infant Jesus in the foreground over the star of Bethlehem and the Christkindl Shrine of Steyer, Austria, in the value of €1.15 in the background, and in the value of €1,10 the Holy Father holding the lantern of Light from Bethlehem and St. Peter’s Basilica in the background.

DATA SHEET

Artist: Kirsten Lubach
Printing house: Royal John Enschedé Stamps BV (Holland)

Series
Fael values: € 1.10 – € 1.15
Stamp format: 30 x 40 mm
Sheet of: 10 copies – Sheet size: 180 x 100 mm
Printing: offset 5 colors (CMYK + gold)
Price of the series: € 2.25
Circulation: 130,000 complete series

Leaflet
Facial values: € 1.10 – € 1.15
Format: 34.5 x 50 mm
Sheet size: 110 x 95 mm
Printing: offset 6 colors (CMYK + gold + silver)
Price of the leaflet: Euro 2.25
Circulation: 55,000 sheets

Booklet
Number of values: 4
Face values € 1.10 – € 1.15 – Stamp format: 30 x 40 mm
Booklet size: 100 x 200 mm (open)
Printing: offset 6 colors (CMYK + gold + silver)
Booklet price: € 4.50
Circulation: 26,000 booklets

Ludwig von Beethoven (Vatican 2020)

[press release, via Google Translate]

Ludwig van Beethoven, a brilliant German composer and pianist, was born in Bonn on 16 December 1770. The Vatican wants to commemorate the German artist on the 250th anniversary of his birth with a philatelic issue consisting of a mini-sheet of 4 values, the work of Chiara Principe. In the stamp, the foreground of the musician, freely inspired by the bronze statue made by the German sculptor Caspar von Zumbusch and located in Beethovenplatz, Vienna, stands out against the background of a starry sky illuminated by the full moon, a clear reference to the famous luna ”to which the staves in the background belong.”

The handwritten signature of the famous composer completes the drawing. The music CD created for the occasion offers some of the most famous Beethovenian compositions, considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Western symphonic music.

DATA SHEET
Face value: € 1.15
Format: 40 x 30 mm
Mini sheet of: 4 stamps – Dimension: 135 x 105 mm
Artist: Chiara Principe
Printing: Cartor (France) – Printing: offset 4 colors
Price of the mini sheet: Euro € 4.60
Circulation: 125,000 complete series
Compact disc
Price of the CD (philatelic series included): Euro 9.90

Hanukkah (Canada 2020)

[press release]
Happy Hanukkah from Canada Post
Brilliant new stamp celebrates the Jewish Festival of Lights

TORONTO – On November 5, Canada Post issued a new commemorative stamp to mark Hanukkah – the Jewish Festival of Lights. The eight-day celebration begins at nightfall on the 25th day of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar, this year December 10. The stamp is available in advance, so Canadians can use it to send holiday greetings.

About Hanukkah
Derived from the Hebrew word for dedication, Hanukkah celebrates the miracle that took place following the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem – Judaism’s holiest site – after the Jewish people reclaimed it from their oppressors around 165 BCE. The victors found only one day’s worth of oil for the Temple menorah, which was required to remain lit at all times. Yet the sacred light burned for eight days, until the new oil supply arrived.

To mark this extraordinary occurrence, Jewish families in Canada and around the world kindle an eight-branched candelabra called a hanukkiyah, or menorah, often placing it in a window.

About the stamp
Designed by Entro Communications, the stamp features a stylized menorah against a bright yellow background. Printed by Colour Innovations, the Permanent™ domestic rate stamp is available in a booklet of 10 stamps and affixed to an Official First Day Cover.

[en Francais]
Postes Canada vous souhaite joyeuse Hanoukka
Un timbre lumineux en l’honneur de Hanoukka, fête des Lumières

TORONTO – Aujourd’hui, Postes Canada a émis un nouveau timbre commémoratif soulignant Hanoukka, la fête juive des Lumières. Le festival de huit jours commence au coucher du soleil le 25e jour de Kislev du calendrier hébraïque, soit le 10 décembre cette année. Le timbre est mis en vente à l’avance alors les Canadiens peuvent l’utiliser pour envoyer leurs cartes de vœux des Fêtes.

À propos de Hanoukka
Hanoukka (du mot hébreu signifiant dédicace) commémore le miracle qui suit la réinauguration du Temple de Jérusalem, lieu le plus sacré du judaïsme, après que le peuple juif le reprend des mains de son oppresseur, environ 165 ans avant l’ère commune. La menorah du Temple doit brûler sans arrêt, mais les vainqueurs ne trouvent de l’huile que pour une journée. Pourtant, la lumière sacrée continue à briller pendant huit jours, jusqu’à l’arrivée de nouvelles réserves d’huile.

Pour souligner cet événement extraordinaire, les familles juives au Canada et partout dans le monde allument un chandelier à huit branches, appelé une hanoukkia ou menorah, qu’ils placent souvent devant une fenêtre.

À propos du timbre
Conçu par Entro Communications, le timbre illustre une menorah stylisée sur un arrière-plan jaune vif. Imprimé par Colour Innovations, le timbre PermanentMC au tarif du régime intérieur est offert en carnet de 10 et sur un pli Premier Jour officiel.