Stamps of Days Gone By
I knew last spring that I wanted to plan a small surprise party for my wonderful husband and partner Bill’s 40th birthday. The whole invitation thing was a little intimidating because he teaches graphic design at Dominican University and I knew I would be inviting his very-talented colleagues from the art department.
Then I read a fascinating article in the Chicago Tribune about using vintage stamps. Here in the US you can use most any stamp printed in the last century as long as the total postage on all of the stamps adds up to the current letter rate. For example, our current rate is $.39 for the first ounce, so any combination of stamps that add up to $.39 can be put on an envelope and mailed.
Given that Bill was born in 1965, I decided to use a collection of stamps from the 60s that reflected his interests of travel, art, education and his love of our national park system. I played with several compositions of them on the envelope very carefully before I licked (they are that old) them so the overall layout didn’t leave awkward spaces.
Vintage stamps are available through www.askphil.org, www.stamps.org and www.stamplink.com. For anyone living in or visiting Chicago, I got mine in the basement stamp booth at Marshall Field’s on State Street. FYI, I got the giant green circle sticker, which I thought worked nicely with the edge of the stamps, at the Paper Source.
I don’t know what regulations are in other countries governing the use of vintage stamps but call your local postmaster for details.
By the way, he was really surprised.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
What an uber-cool idea!
I once covered a whole envelope with one and two-cent stamps. That was a cool look too.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Brilliant! I love it. I had no idea that you could use any stamp in the last 100 years. Rock on.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:02 am
I have a TON of old stamps my Mom hung onto for me over the years! What a lovely use for them! Great presentation, it’s really striking and fun!
July 14th, 2006 at 1:03 am
This is such a wonderful idea! Very creative.
July 14th, 2006 at 1:19 am
Ebay is also a good source for vintage stamps. Earlier this year I sold my childhood stamp collection including hundreds of vintage stamps from the 60’s. Now I see that I should have kept some of them!!
July 14th, 2006 at 3:56 am
Oh, I love old stamps and have bunches (although nearly all are cancelled and from received mail). I didn’t realize you could buy unused old stamps! Way cool, thanks for sharing.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:29 am
What a lovely mail solution! I really like the design on the Illinois stamp most of all. :)
July 14th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
The other day I was at pure paper http://www.pure-paper.com/ and they were selling envelopes with vintage stamps on them adding up to the current postage. It was really neat, now I might have to go back and get some.
July 14th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
Wow. Super idea, excellent design. Good job!!!!
July 19th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Nice!!
Here in Germany, you could use vintage stamps up till 2002, when the Euro was introduced as our new currency. Since then, you can only use stamps showing the postage in Euro-Cents. So now, vintage stamps would be the ones with both currencies (DM and Euro), as that is how the “new” stamps were introduced (trying to make it easier to find one’s way around).
Beste Grüße,
*johanna*