The World's Commonest Stamp.

Rod, I believe you made that comment in regard to the Austrian 3g Tyrol girl stamp?

https://goscf.com/t/7658

OK, here is the link to the original thread...

https://goscf.com/t/7243

You're a whizz Kim.
Thanks a bunch, changed the thread title too.

Well, there are many things I'm terrible at. For example:

# of 3g Tyrol girl stamps in my collection: >100
# I can actually find: 0

For me, it's one of the "most common stamp in my accumulation that I can't find".


k

BeeSee -----

-forward this on to your sister and brother

Sounds like a challenge, to me. I know I have 2 x unused copies, but not sure about used. Now I've got to look ...

OMG--that orange Espana stamp made me cringe!!

And...that 2 cent George Washington stamp makes me cringe, too. A couple of years ago I bought a lot of stamps from ebay and there were tons of those in the lot--I thought I had won the lottery...NOT!

Gussyboy is back!

SCF is back to normal, nearly,
we just need La swabbie and a few others....

OMG that big head Espana dude is back, I hated that guy back in the day when 10% of all the stamps in the orange bag from Woolworth's had this big head dude on them. ]



Now if the powers to be at Harris would have put this Espana gal in multiple times I'm sure a lot of 10-13 year old boys would have been happy.

Mention was made earlier in this thread by Khj about stamps that may have been printed in high quantities, but do not have high retention rates either because they were not popular with collectors, or they were removed from sale, etc.

Has anyone taken notice of the US regular issue stamps for the post card rate?

In April 2011 the USPS issued a 29-cent stamp with five different Herbs pictured on it. I was amazed that they printed 300 million stamps in sheet form and a whopping 1 billion (with a "B") stamps in coils of 100.

Fast forward to January 2012 and the postcard rate is changing, therefore, 1.3 billion of these stamps that have been in use for less than 9 months will be replaced and the majority remaining (and I imagine that to be quite a few) are most likely to be recalled and destroyed.

In the coming week, the USPS is issuing the 32-cent Aloha Shirts stamps for the increased postcard rate IN THE EXACT SAME QUANTITIES: 300 million sheet format stamps and 1 billion stamps in coils of 100. So we have another 1.3 billion postcard rate stamps on the market.

Does anyone else think these quantities are outrageous? It just seems so much higher than I could ever imagine the need for a postcard rate stamp would ever be and it easily exceeds any US first class rate stamps currently being printed.

Considering the financial dilemma of the US Postal Service, and their commitment to "Go Green" initiatives, the sheer quantity of these postcard rate stamps seems so unnecessary. Wouldn't it have made more sense to print perhaps half that amount and if demand required it, they could always be reprinted? The USPS does just that with other definitive stamps, so why not the one for the postcard rate? Or could there be contractual requirements that must be met which dictate the higher quantities?

While neither of these stamps will ever come up to the level of the world's most commonest stamps, they may rank right up there in a category with "the most stamps printed but in use for shortest time."

Great pic Floortrader! Do you have a closeup of the wording on the bag?

Well, many of us have more reasons to hate "that big head Espana dude", than just the ugly stamps of the 1955 definitive series...

Although I don't have the wording on the bag, I can tell you from my childhood days in the 1960's that those cloth bags were sold by retail outlets through HE Harris & Co. They were the usual "dime store" acquisition many kids on a small allowance could afford. The stamps were very common, with duplicates galore, but it made for an interesting and colorful first experience into the world of stamp collecting and would begin a learning experience in identifying stamps from various countries.

I think they may still produce a type of that "big bag" today, although the price is no longer $1 and the cloth bags have changed to plastic ones.

Although this is way before my time, here's an old time picture HE Harris & Co. used in one of their catalogs when they were in Boston during the 1940's. Those sacks could very likely have contained similar bags of worldwide stamps!

That is a really cool picture of loading the Harris truck ... a true moment in collecting and Americana history, the likes of which will never be repeated. Thanks for sharing!