Just Curious About The "Made In America" Panes

It seems that the "Made In America" panes are a bit peculiar as a collecting item. Apparently they will all contain the same stamps, but with five different selvage designs. I'm not aware of any other case where the postal department/service did this. Perhaps they did, but I can't remember it. If they have, I'm sure someone on SCF will enlighten me. This brings me to another conundrum. How will Scott etal categorize these five different panes? Have they ever given specific identification numbers based solely on drastically different selvage?

No one knows for sure. There has not been a previously issued US Stamp with different selvage only to my recollection. The Scott catalog people may very well take the position that the stamps do not differ, therefore they will not give specific catalog numbers to the panes with different selvage; then again they may do it anyway.

It's merely a gimmick by the USPS to sell more stamps to collectors. Unless you're a new issue fanatic, I would say boycott the idea of buying more than one pane of the stamps and maybe the USPS will get the message and not do it again.

Personally, in the one rare occasion, it would be best to buy a 1x5 Press Sheet that contains all five stamp selvages at the same cost as trying to acquire each sheet separately.

Well, technically each of the recent major league all star stamps appears in two different panes with different selvage. Likewise, in concept it is no different from having a stamp appearing in a pane and separately in a ss. Perhaps one can treat the 5 Made in America sheets as 5 separate ss's. A ss does not have to be restricted to a single stamp. Many other countries have been doing this for years.

Come to think of it, if the Made in America sheets sell well, you can bet that the USPS will do this more often.

For panes that contain all different stamps, Scott usually assigns a single major number to the whole pane, with individual stamps getting minor lettered numbers. My guess is that the multiple selvedge designs won't get separate numbers, but will be footnoted, since the stamps are the same.

There have been several issues of booklets with different covers but all with identical stamps. Did Scott make any notations or different numbers for the booklet covers?

Have you noticed that the USPS is selling the uncut imperforated sheets Made in America (2,500 issued) with no limit to order? I placed the order yesterday and got 10 sheets. Also the Eid imperforated sheets are for sale without ordering limit (500 issued!). The previous imperforated sheets have had limit 5 units per order. I recommend to purchase the Eid and Made in America imperforated sheets for new USA stamp issue collectors as soon as possible; they will be gone very soon.

For those who are planning to resell the imperf panes, would you cut them up and sell them as individual panes? Or sell the whole imperf press sheet as one?

Since the 5 panes are essentially different because of the different selvages I'd keep them intact. There is not much of a market though for these right now and you have to hold on to them for quite some time in case you're in it for the money. Also, consider that these panes will take up a lot of space!

I just checked the technical specs for these stamps and one individual pane is 8" wide by 6.5" high. In a Press Sheet 1x5 format, that would make the entire Press Sheet at least 32.5" high. That becomes a storage problem for collectors, so many (most) will keep them rolled up just as they come in from the USPS mailer.

Other than for speculators who want to keep these Press Sheets for potential future profit, I find that these sort of "collectibles" are just too big to display and become more of a dust collector than a true stamp collectible. If you can't enjoy them by looking at them from time to time, it kind of defeats the purpose of collecting them in the first place.

[correction] The USPS Store's website shows the dimension of the Made in America Press Sheet to be 8.25" (w) x 33.75" (h). Even larger than I previously suggested.