The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 29, July 10, 2005, Article 5

B.E.P. ELIMINATES STAMP PRINTING

Dick Johnson writes: "Paper money is the main product of the
U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing now, since it stopped
printing postage stamps June 10, 2005. Private printers will
now supply all stamps for the United States Postal System
and the BEP will "concentrate on printing currency."

After 111 years of producing postage stamps as "security certificates"
BEP does not consider them on the same level now as currency
requiring the tight security in the federal plants. U.S. Postal Service
officials say will save tens of millions of dollars a year.

"The Postal Service actually began to chip away at the government
printing with a contract that gave some commemorative stamps to
private printers in 1978. The private printers' share of stamp production
grew steadily and accelerated when the agency turned to self-adhesive
stamps in the early 1990s."

[The following are excerpts from a June 13 Washington Post
article Dick forwarded. -Editor]

"The federal government printed its last postage stamps Friday."

"Workers pulled a final roll of 37-cent flag stamps from an aging,
four-color Andreotti press on the fourth floor. That simple act
terminated a once-thriving business that the Treasury Department
agency had monopolized for decades."

"For Washington's 60 remaining stamp printers and many stamp
collectors, Friday marked a sad transition. Lawrence T. Graves,
one of BEP's senior stamp officials, called it "bittersweet . . .
a sad day."

"It's the end of an era that reflected some of finest workmanship
in government stamp design and security printing worldwide,"
said Rob Haeseler, an official of the American Philatelic Society,
the nation's largest organization for stamp collectors. Finances
and what BEP Director Thomas A. Ferguson said was a decision
to no longer treat stamps like currency led postal officials away
from the hand-engraved stamps that were the bureau's hallmark
and toward cheaper, lithographed stamps."

"When the end approached, the bureau arranged buyouts,
retirements and currency printing jobs for the stamp printers.
They decided against a final ceremony, fearing it might prove
"too maudlin," said Ferguson, who began his bureau career more
than 30 years ago as a stamp quality expert."

"Ironically, many of the stamps the bureau printed last week
may never be sold.

If the Postal Service wins its recent request for a two-cent hike
to a 39-cent stamp, to be effective early next year, Hudson said,
there will no need for the bureau's last stamp run."

To read the full story, see: Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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