A 2011 US Stamp That Never Came To Be?

Here's an interesting item I first picked up from a post on VSC ... but sure enough, the USPS Facebook images still lists it -- a $1.02 stamp that was apparently in the planning stages but was never issued in 2011:



Since it was posted by the USPS on Facebook, and the rate is now meaningless, I suspect it was planned in anticipation of the first postage rate hike announced early in 2011 but later denied by the Postal Rate Commission and the stamp design was never taken down from the USPS Facebook site.

Not that the stamp is all that attractive, but it does seem rather odd that if the USPS had selected a stamp and its designer all picked out, that they wouldn't have just adjusted the denomination and issued the stamp already in the planning stages for the 2012 rate increase, but since they just announced the $1.05 Lancaster County, PA stamp for that purpose, it seems that this design has fallen by the wayside.

It makes you wonder just how many stamps get this far into the planning stages and get pulled for one reason or another.

Well, it isn't any wonder their having such a tough time as that must have cost somebody something to get it that far along ya know? I think it's lovely but it was probably a more lucrative to sell that smaller denomination over the higher denomination as selling quantity over quality most likely made more sense. Just my hypothesis is all. Thank you wt1.

I'm thinking that the stamp may have already been produced due to the speed they can print the things. (There was the recent post of producing stamps from England.) But it seems to me a specific run especially the quantity that would probably be used plus a few extra should not have taken very long. I think the logistics of shipping to all the PO's would have been more time consuming. And heaven forbid putting on a extra 2 or 5 cent stamp on a piece of mail to make up the difference.

I wonder how many stamps are sitting in a warehouse somewhere that haven't been used yet. I remember story's about gas rationing coupons being produced in the 70's for the supposed shortages we had back then.

I'm also wondering how this sits with the State of Indiana and those involved in the Prairie Border Nature Preserve, the subject of this "killed" stamp issue. It would seem to me that the State as well as the Preserve would have been on the bandwagon early on to agree to and provide promotion for a stamp depicting their region of the country and then to have it pulled, with no replacement of any kind, seems like it would have been a let down to the locals in that area.