US Official Prestamped Envelopes

I am still in the middle of a pile of prestamped material and looking through a Scotts Volume I for my information. If I am in the right place, this item shows a ridiculously high catalogue value for a Used example. The quote is in italics though which usually indicates something, "ahem", strange going on with the item. Back to asking the experts for the story.

you need to be looking under First Day Cancel. Scott UO82 2009 says $2.25. hope that helps

The same pricing structure holds true for most of the modern Official Mail stamps and envelopes. If they are attached to a First Day Cover, the value is minimal; when they are shown with period cancels demonstrating postal use by the "Official Mail" user (in your case, the Dept. of State) then they command a considerably higher premium. It is all due to the scarcity of the use of the stamp by the government entity. On the other hand, First Day cancels were produced by the tens (or hundreds) of thousands, so they have flooded the market by comparison and therefore offer little in terms of value.

OK - that explains the huge prices listed for used entires for the modern issues especially. I still wonder why the need for the issues if usage was so rare? And who was profiting by the creation of massive numbers of FDCs? Post Office? General Government Revenues? Dealers? The economics of producing "collectibles" for a specific niche market is fascinating.

Most of it had to do with the transition from stamps to postage meters during that period. Here's a link to an article from Linn's Stamp News that may help to explain it in a bit more detail:

http://www.linns.com/howto/refreshe...rcourse.aspx

By the mid-1990's most US Official Mail was metered as shown by these examples (interesting that the various government offices used both Hasler and Pitney Bowes meters):

Great article! Thanks for the link.

Here are two examples of Scott UO73 that were postally used:

I know those Official Mail Embossed Envelopes are correctly printed, but everytime I look at them (even in my own collection) it seems to me the printer/designer should have dotted the "i"'s, since they are supposed to be shown as lower case letters.

It wasn't until the issuance of UO76 some five years later that the dots were added -- but bureaucracies aren't known for their agility.