Quality Of Todays US Stamps

Used to be I could go by the Philatelic window in Roseville, MI and spend good amounts of time with the PO rep going through her whole stock of stamps looking for the best possible i.e. VF-EF, grade and centering. They closed that position 5 years or more ago. Now I just go local and pretty much buy what I can get because there are normally bunches of people in line and since I have never tried I doubt the PO service person would let me sit there for 20 minutes to look through their stock. I have returned stamps I have bought through the USA Philatelic because the centering was less than desired. One would think with the advances in printing we would not ever see another F-VF stamp. Untrue! I cannot believe some of the garbage I come across coming from these three printers. I feel every stamp I buy nowadays should be a minimum of a "cert" 95. Thoughts?

Quality of todays U.S. stamps is nonexistent. It is not about quality it is cost of production.

Agreed! Quality is just not what it used to be. In fact, I just picked up a booklet of Flag Stamps today at the post office (the reprints) and look at the condition of the upper left stamp right from the post office ... smeared ink above the flag and to the left of "USA".

Very sloppy quality control.

There is a special beauty and quality of the old engraved stamps that is lacking in the new issues. You can tell you are old when you remember engrave stamps and steel car bumpers. Progress, how wonderful it is.

I used to drive a 1953 Chevrolet. The steel of the body would put a tank to shame. It would have demolished any of todays cracker boxes and suffered only a couple of scratches

I agree, with todays equipment in the printing world it is simply take a pic, burn a plate , throw it on the press and go. Few more steps but with automatic everything you would expect nothing but VF . I used to run an older webb 5 color press and went to another shop to watch a newer swedish press in action. The head press operator showed me the control board and said he could sleep until paper ran out.
Who needed airbags back when bumpers were 100lbs a pc. Had a monster 72 olds and swear if it had wings it could fly and be bullit proof at same time.

Look at British stamps... very well printed, usually well designed... Also plenty of gummed issues. Very good mail-order service.

Now look at USPS stamps... Every year they get worse and worse. Perhaps the USPS knows that our society doesn't seem to care about quality anymore, just quantity... and everyone wants it NOW... doesn't matter that it's all garbage...

(sigh...)

And people wonder why I haven't collected a new U.S. issue since 1993? All we get today are expensive, ugly stickers with bad designs and terrible quality control, by the ton.

Why am I supposed to want to buy these and support the USPS again?

I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this, but one observation I've noticed is over the last couple of years the USPS has used their own staff artists to design most new stamp issues.

I believe as USPS staff people, they do not get a stipend or payment as an outside artist would if they submit their artwork to be used.

It could be that this is all a cost-cutting measure on the part of the USPS. By using internal staff, the quality of the stamps may be degrading, but if the bottom line is cost, I can see the point that they would not want to have to pay out money to outside artists for such work.

Again, I have no privileged information or knowledge of the inner workings of the USPS stamp design team, but in reading some of the Beyond the Perf news, the stamps artists profiled are mostly all USPS staff.

If the bottom line is cost, why are they releasing hundreds upon hundreds of stamp designs per year? If it was costing so much to design stamps, wouldn't you think they'd make, I don't know... LESS?!?!?!?

Because the profit they make selling to collectors likely far exceeds the cost of design, printing and distribution.

Hey Nitro I had a 1973 Ford Galaxie with a 351 Windsor (I wanted the Cleveland but oh well)That car moved too for a big as it was!

I just made an interesting observation:
I do not collect the 'Sand Dunes' stamps, but I do have an accumulation of them stuck in a stock book. In looking these much-maligned stamps over, I have found that many of them are more attractive and have much better subject matter than most of today's USPS offerings! What a sad state of affairs....

By the way, I also drove a chrome laden steel tank...er....1957 Dodge Coronet!

If they're printing this insane volume of stamps for collectors, why don't they issue all commemoratives as water activated gum and all definitives as self-adhesive and make evryone happy?

Folks, I can't understand the rational for some of the subject matter of modern issues--as well as the quality thing! I guess that,and the self-adhesive fiasco is what has me turned off on collecting beyond the 40s-50s. If the USPS doesn't stop loosing billions annually, we may not have to be concerned about it.

Ducky - as has been suggested, it is all about cost - they could make them all near perfect, but it would cost more.