The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 36, September 5, 2004, Article 16

TAKING COMMEMORATIVES TOO FAR

  A September 2 Wall Street Journal article discusses the
  custom-made stamps the U.S. Postal Service allows a
  private firm to produce and sell.  This takes the concept of
  commemoratives to its extreme, basically allowing anyone
  who wants to put anything on a stamp to do it, for a fee.
  The high production costs of coins should ensure it never
  comes to this in numismatics, but it's interesting to think
  about.   You could give your kids and grandkids coins
  with their own pictures on them.  The debasement of the
  medium is a slippery slope that begins with the first
  commemorative coin and ends when the public finally
  gets sick of the proliferation of designs in circulation.
  Someday in the U.S. there may be a backlash that ends
  the parade of new coin designs we've been seeing.
  Here are some excerpts from the article:

  "When Stamps.com launched a service that turns any digital
  photo into a custom postage stamp -- a vanity stamp of sorts
  -- the company anticipated portraits of Spot, the family dog,
  not the spot on Monica Lewinsky's infamous blue dress. But
  the Smoking Gun Web site decided to use the latter to
  prove a point.

  "We thought it was ridiculous -- a way to raise revenue by
  letting anyone put their mug on a stamp," says William Bastone,
  editor of thesmokinggun.com, a site owned by Court TV that
  collects celebrity mug shots, quirky court reports and
  government documents.

  "For the longest time, stamps [were reserved for] statesmen,
  people who helped do incredible things for the country. Now
  it's devolved into Daffy Duck and every manner of dopey thing,"
  he says."

  "So Mr. Bastone and his colleagues decided to push the
  envelope. Some of their more egregious submissions for the
  stamps, like a mug shot of Lee Harvey Oswald, were swiftly
  rejected by Stamps.com. But pictures of a high school-aged
  Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, former Serbian leader Slobodan
  Milosevic and Lewinsky confidante Linda Tripp -- along with
  Ms. Lewinsky's dress -- are now legal postage."

  "The Postal Service authorized Stamps.com to conduct a
  two-month test of PhotoStamps, starting Aug. 10. The USPS
  declined to comment on what would happen to the service
  after the trial ends. Instead, a spokesman noted that the
  service's next official stamp will feature John Wayne."

  [So now's your window of opportunity to get your smiling
  face on your own official U.S. postage stamp.  If the one-
  penny black is rare and valuable, how much will collectors
  pay one day for the unique ?
  -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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