USPS Releases Design For Sunshine Skyway Bridge Stamp

The design for the $5.15 Priority Mail Sunshine Skyway Bridge Stamp has just been unveiled this morning on the USPS Beyond the Perf Website:



Two more new stamp designs are set to be announced later this week!

http://beyondtheperf.com/2012-previ...kyway-bridge

That's a sharp looking stamp but I don't get excited over the newer issues anymore. I'd have to be a millionaire to keep up these days! In my opinion there are just to many stamp releases every year to keep up with.

Agree. Just wait until the $18.95 Carmel Mission stamp design gets released. Another one I don't intend to buy as it becomes just too expensive.

Not bad. If anyone still collects these current stamps 50 years from now, a nicely-canceled example of this stamp will be a rare thing, indeed.

Agreed. However, it's unfortunate that most Priority Mail will likely get a meter or label and not a stamp. It will also be interesting to see just how many of these stamps will be printed.

Of course, if it's worth $5.15 to someone, it might be interesting to prepare and send a Priority Mail envelope to yourself, affixing this stamp to it, to show proper usage, maybe even on the first day of issue. Even though it wasn't used for business purposes, if you paid the correct rate and the Priority Mail envelope went through the mail stream, it would be a legitimate usage and thus a collectible ... that is if the stamp gets through the USPS mailing equipment and by the mail carrier undamaged and a decent postmark gets affixed to it. These are risks that one takes upon sending any mail of this type today.

If a person was interested in buying these priority mail stamps with the thought of making money on them in the future, would it be a good idea to buy these by the sheet? That seems even rarer than a cancelled single, to me.

I've ask the postal clerk to use the priority stamps on my packages instead of the meter labels and was told they didn't have them, and haven't used them for a long time.

Unfortunately, that's a very common problem. Unlike commemorative and/or definitive stamps that are directly supplied to each post office on the date of issue, these high value stamps must be specifically ordered by the Postmaster in each location (presumably in sufficient quantity to meet local demand).

Those Postmasters who do not cater to a stamp collecting clientele are likely to forego ordering these stamps in the first place, as meters are easier for them to deal with, as they don't have to inventory a vast quantity of high value stamps that few people are likely to purchase on the retail level.

Local Postmasters often point to USA Philatelic as the means in which to acquire stamps the local post office doesn't carry.

I would say it would be a significant challenge to make enough money on these stamps that you will do better than inflation.