A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage. Then the stamp is affixed to the face or address-side of any item of mail—an envelope or other postal cover —which they wish to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark or cancellation mark—in modern usage indicating date and point of origin of mailing—is applied to the stamp and its left and right sides to prevent its reuse. Next the item is delivered to its addressee.
A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. There are novelty exceptions, such as wooden postcards, copper postcards sold in the Copper Country of the U.S. state of Michigan, and coconut "postcards" from tropical islands.
Postal cards are postal stationery with an imprinted stamp or indicium signifying the prepayment of postage. They are sold by postal authorities. On January 26, 1869, Dr. Emanuel Herrmann of Austria described the advantages of a Correspondenz Karte. By October 1, 1869 the world's first postal card was produced by Austria-Hungary. They caught on quickly. By the end of 1870, Great Britain, Finland, Switzerland and Württemberg joined the countries issuing postal cards. In the United States, they were first produced in 1873. Some of the forms taken by postal cards include the regular single card which may be commemorative or definitive, attached message-reply cards, airmail postal cards, and official postal cards used for official government business with a "penalty for private use".
Postal service in the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.
The postage stamps and postal system of the Confederate States of America carried the mail of the Confederacy for a brief period in American history. Early in 1861 when South Carolina no longer considered itself part of the Union and demanded that the U.S. Army abandon Fort Sumter, plans for a Confederate postal system were already underway. Indeed, the Confederate Post Office was established on February 21, 1861; and it was not until April 12 that the American Civil War officially began, when the Confederate Army fired upon US soldiers who had refused to abandon the fort. However, the United States Post Office Department continued to handle the mail of the seceded states as usual during the first weeks of the war. It was not until June 1 that the Confederate Post Office took over collection and delivery, now faced with the task of providing postage stamps and mail services for its citizens.
A Christmas stamp is a postage stamp with a Christmas theme, intended for use on seasonal mail such as Christmas cards. Many countries of the world issue such stamps, which are regular postage stamps and are usually valid for postage year-round. They usually go on sale some time between early October and early December, and are printed in considerable quantities.
The system for mail delivery in the United States has developed with the nation. Rates were based on the distance between sender and receiver in the early years of the nation. In the middle of the 19th century, rates stabilized to one price regardless of distance. Rates were relatively unchanged until 1968, when the price was increased every few years by a small amount. Comparing the increases with a price index, the price of a first class stamp has been steady. The logo for the Post Office showed a man on a running horse, even as the railroads and then motorized trucks moved mail. In 1970, the Post Office became the Postal Service, with rates set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, and some oversight by the Congress. Air mail became standard in 1975. In the 21st century, prices were segmented to match the sorting machinery in use; letters too large for the machines required slightly higher postage.
In philately, the denomination is the "inscribed value of a stamp".
Postage stamps and postal history of the Canal Zone is a subject that covers the postal system, postage stamps used and mail sent to and from the Panama Canal Zone from 1904 up until October 1978, after the United States relinquished its authority of the Zone in compliance with the treaty it reached with Panama.
Vinegar valentines were a type of cheeky postcard decorated with a caricature and insulting poem. A lampoon of Valentine's Day cards, the unflattering novelty items enjoyed a century of popularity beginning in the 1840s during the Victorian era.
Non-denominated postage is postage intended to meet a certain postage rate that retains full validity for that intended postage rate even after the rate is increased. It does not show a monetary value, or denomination, on the face. In many English-speaking countries, it is called non-value indicator or non-value indicated (NVI) postage. Introduced to reduce the cost of printing large issues of low-value stamps to "top-up" old issues, NVI stamps are used in many countries.
The Columbian Issue, also known as the Columbians, is a set of 16 postage stamps issued by the United States to commemorate the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago during 1893. The finely-engraved stamps were the first commemorative stamps issued by the United States, depicting various events during the career of Christopher Columbus and are presently much valued by collectors.
Presidents of the United States have frequently appeared on U.S. postage stamps since the mid-19th century. The United States Post Office Department released its first two postage stamps in 1847, featuring George Washington on one, and Benjamin Franklin on the other. The advent of presidents on postage stamps has been definitive to U.S. postage stamp design since the first issues were released and set the precedent that U.S. stamp designs would follow for many generations.
The 1930 Graf Zeppelin stamps were a set of three airmail postage stamps, each depicting the image of the Graf Zeppelin, issued by the United States Post Office Department in 1930, exclusively for delivery of mail carried aboard that airship. Although the stamps were valid for postage on mail sent on the Zeppelin Pan American flight from Germany to the United States, via Brazil, the set was marketed to collectors and was largely intended to promote the route. 93.5% of the revenue generated by the sale of these stamps went to the Zeppelin Airship Works in Germany. The Graf Zepplin stamps were issued as a gesture of goodwill toward Germany. The three stamps were used briefly and then withdrawn from sale. The remainder of the stock was destroyed by the Post Office Department. Due to the high cost of the stamps during the Great Depression, most collectors and the general public could not afford them. Consequently, only about 227,000 of the stamps were sold, just 7% of the total printed, making them relatively scarce and prized by collectors.
Emanuel Alexander Herrmann was an Austrian national economist. He is considered the decisive last in an international line of inventors of the postal card.
The Washington–Franklin Issues are a series of definitive U.S. Postage stamps depicting George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, issued by the U.S. Post Office between 1908 and 1922. The distinctive feature of this issue is that it employs only two engraved heads set in ovals—Washington and Franklin in full profile—and replicates one or another of these portraits on every stamp denomination in the series. This is a significant departure from previous definitive issues, which had featured pantheons of famous Americans, with each portrait-image confined to a single denomination. At the same time, this break with the recent past represented a return to origins. Washington and Franklin, after all, had appeared on the first two American stamps, issued in 1847, and during the next fifteen years, each of the eight stamp denominations available featured either Washington or Franklin.
The Regular Issues of 1922–1931 were a series of 27 U.S. postage stamps issued for general everyday use by the U.S. Post Office. Unlike the definitives previously in use, which presented only a Washington or Franklin image, each of these definitive stamps depicted a different president or other subject, with Washington and Franklin each confined to a single denomination. The series not only restored the historical tradition of honoring multiple presidents on U.S. Postage but extended it. Offering the customary presidential portraits of the martyred Lincoln and Garfield, the war hero Grant, and the founding fathers Washington and Jefferson, the series also memorialized some of the more recently deceased presidents, beginning with Hayes, McKinley, Cleveland and Roosevelt. Later, the deaths of Harding, Wilson and Taft all prompted additions to the presidential roster of Regular Issue stamps, and Benjamin Harrison's demise (1901) was belatedly deemed recent enough to be acknowledged as well, even though it had already been recognized in the Series of 1902. The Regular Issues also included other notable Americans, such as Martha Washington and Nathan Hale—and, moreover, was the first definitive series since 1869 to offer iconic American pictorial images: these included the Statue of Liberty, the Capitol Building and others. The first time (1869) that images other than portraits of statesmen had been featured on U.S. postage, the general public disapproved, complaining that the scenes were no substitute for images of presidents and Franklin. However, with the release of these 1922 regular issues, the various scenes—which included the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial and even an engraving of an American Buffalo—prompted no objections. To be sure, this series presented pictorial images only on the higher-value stamps; the more commonly used denominations, of 12 cents and lower, still offered the traditional portraits.
The history of Virginia through the colonial period on into contemporary times has been depicted and commemorated on postage stamps accounting for many important personalities, places and events involving the nation's history. Themes are particularly rich in early American and new nation history, historical landmarks, and Virginia-born presidents.
The U.S. Parcel Post stamps of 1912–13 were the first such stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office Department and consisted of twelve denominations to pay the postage on parcels weighing 16 ounces and more, with each denomination printed in the same color of "carmine-rose". Their border design was similar while each denomination of stamp bore its own distinctive image in the center (vignette). Unlike regular postage items, whose rates were determined by weight in ounces, Parcel Post rates were determined and measured by increments in pounds. The new stamps were soon widely used by industry, farmers and others who lived in rural areas. Partly owing to some confusion involving their usage, their exclusive use as Parcel Post stamps proved short lived, as regular postage stamps were soon allowed to be used to pay parcel postage rates.
Newman Post Card Co. (1904–1918) was founded by Oscar Newman. The Newman Post Card Company published post cards in hand colored collotype and tinted halftones, which were mostly holiday cards and views of Southern California.
