Boy, was she irritated. Her husband had arrived home from the post office bearing Love stamps -- a hand holding a bouquet of flowers, the word LOVE beneath -- just as my friend was preparing to mail the gas and electric bill. Toward the end of a cold, expensive winter, she was feeling little warmth for the utility company. She had no intention of putting the stamp of love on that particular transaction.
"It's not that kind of relationship," she snapped.
I had never thought much about the messages we send with our stamps until a couple of weeks ago, when a postal clerk handed me a sheet of Ronald Reagan stamps. I froze. As a journalist, I try to keep my political sentiments to myself.
Would I be touting the Republican Party if I sent out Reagan stamps? Would Democrats be offended? Would anyone at all think I had done nothing more than buy a handsome-looking 37-cent stamp?
I asked the clerk what else she had. With great relief, I settled on two Black Heritage stamps, with images of Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson. Though Robeson, who died in 1976, was once a controversial and political figure, time has dulled those associations.
Usually, I buy my stamps at the supermarket. It's convenient. All I have to do is put them on the grocery list when I'm running low. And I don't have to think about what I want. The U.S. Postal Service provides supermarkets, which began selling stamps on consignment in the early 1990s, with what I think of as generic stamps -- bright U.S. flags or a collection of antique toys. The basic message is, "Put me on your mail and send me on my way."
"You need to think of stamps in two different ways," David Failor, executive director of Stamp Services for the Postal Service, told me. "There are commemorative stamps and definitive stamps."
Commemorative stamps, such as the Reagan stamp or the Robeson and Anderson stamps, generally are put on sale for about a year, or until they run out. They may be part of a long-running series, such as the Love or Black Heritage stamps, but each design in the series is sold for a limited period. Traditionally, a person cannot be on a stamp until 10 years after his death, to see if he has stood the test of time. Exceptions are made for U.S. presidents.
"The definitive stamps -- the flag, the antique toys -- are the everyday workhorses, the staples that we print over and over," Failor said. "The reason we have the definitive is that we can really drive down the cost. The more you print, the lower the cost. We make the assumption that the people who go into a grocery store to buy stamps are doing it as a convenience. You need stamps, and you're not so concerned about having a choice."
About $750 million worth of stamps a year are sold on consignment, a convenience the Postal Service began expanding in 2002. Now, stamps are sold at 25,000 supermarkets, drugstores, and card, gift and convenience stores; 27,500 vending machines; and 19,000 automated teller machines, according to Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the Postal Service. Many retailers sell them at face value, though some charge a fee.
