Celebrate Scouting Stamp Issued 06/09/2012

Has anyone picked up their "Celebrate Scouting" stamp today at the post office? I tried one post office that was SOLD OUT before I got there. Went to the neighboring post office and they were sold out at the counter, too, but fortunately they had an additional stock out back.

Seems as though this is going to be a very popular stamp. I was particularly impressed that the stamps have quite a high gloss sheen to them, too.

By the way, for those of you who don't keep track of such things, this issue has USPS microprinting included within the image, as shown in this example:

I've been debating starting a topical collection of scouting stamps. My son is in the Boy Scouts and they do have a stamp collecting merit badge. I think that might be a good entry into the hobby for him.

I mailed a couple of covers to myself with "unofficial" first day postmarks of 06/09/2012, however, to my surprise, Boston, Massachusetts is still using a Mother's Day Slogan Cancel!

As far as I know actual sales of US "Forever" stamps (as opposed to overall number of stamps printed) is data that is hard to come by.

Therefore, I found it rather interesting to note that the concluding line of this news release published 09/24/2012 suggests that of the 40 million Celebrate Scouting Stamps issued on June 9, 2012, 9.8 million have been sold as of August 31, 2012, which comes out to less than 25% (specifically 24.5%) of the overall print run in just under three months time.

https://liteblue.usps.gov/news/link...news25s2.htm

Even if the sale of these stamps were to continue at the rate of 1 million per month it would take another 2-1/2 years at that rate for the overall quantity of stamps printed to be depleted.

Based on this information, it would be my guess that when these stamps are taken off sale, a sizable quantity of them will remain and probably be destroyed.

It seems as though this is yet another example of excessive printing of stamps that are seeing much lower use than in previous years.