If It Were Up to Me

I only ever used a pseudonym once that I can remember in all the writing I have done. That pseudonym was Homer T. Knudbucker, and I used it for an article about stamps in a magazine called Reason. It was meant mainly to be a humorous article, and I think it was, but I have to admit that it depended on the reader's sense of humor more than mine. Some of the editors of the magazine at the time did not get, or did not appreciate, some of the lines––so who knows how readers responded inwardly?

No matter. I raise this only to introduce a reverie I had the other early morning when I could not sleep. I decided that I don't like the definitive stamps the US Post Office currently has available. I like the ones from my childhood much better, and if it were up to me I would reintroduce them with different denominations, maybe slightly different colors, with one or two personalities dropped for certain reasons and one or two added for other reasons. Only stamp collectors think of things like this. Other people, normal people, think stamp collectors are crazy, or at least a little bit odd. I wrote about that in my article, under my pseudonym of course. Maybe I am a little bit crazy, because I really mean it: If it were in my power to determine the next definitive stamps set, this is what I would do. So let me show you specifically.

Here below is the 1-cent stamp from back then.





As you can see, it's George Washington. I would not change this, except maybe to make the green a little darker.

Next, the 2-cent.



Again, I would not change anything about this stamp except maybe to deepen the color.

The three-cent stamp in the old series from 1954 was not a portrait of a person but rather a symbolic design featuring the Statue of Liberty in deep blue. My idea for the new series is just to use the portraits. The other designs from back then that I would not use included Mount Vernon, Independence Hall, Monticello, the Hermitage, the Alamo, a symbolic rendition of Bunker Hill and one or two others.

There is a need for a three cent stamp, however, and I think this is a good place for a definitive stamp for Martin Luther King, Jr., and I would render the stamp in dark brown.

Now, the 4-cent stamp I also would not change much, if at all.





This is a photo of a used coil, and damaged on the left, but you get the idea. This was the most common stamp from when I was a kid. First-class mail was just four cents, an eleventh of what it is today.

The 5-cent stamp was James Monroe: I would not change it either, again except maybe to deepen the blue.




There is no reason to have a 6-cent stamp these days, so I would take the old design, below, and turn it into a 20-cent stamp, which is the rate for additional ounces beyond the first ounce in first-class. That will remain the case after rates rise as of January 1, 2012.






It could stay the same color.

Next in the old series was a 7-cent stamp. If it were up to me, I would not use this design, because I hate this man.





There was not one but two basic 8-cent stamp designs, a 9, a 10 and later an 11, but these were all non-portraits, so I would not use them.

The next portrait was the 12-cent:






It's a nice enough stamp, but I would not use it, because no one remembers who Benjamin Harrison was. Same with the next one, the 15-cent.




Right now the postcard rate is 29 cents, which is stupid. It should be 30 cents, because if it were we could use the same stamp from back then, as below:





We also need a 40-cent stamp, which is what the first-class rate ought to be rather than the silly 44 cents it is now, or the 45 cents it will soon be. So we can use the same one we had before:





We can also use the same 50-cent stamp, as below, or we could change it into an 85-cent stamp, which will be the new rate for letters to Canada and Mexico (up from the current 75 cents):




and we can use the same $1 stamp, which should be the rate for 1 ounce international airmail, instead of the stupid 98-cents it is now or the even stupider $1.05 it will be come next year.





Now, we need a $2 dollar stamp, and one personality from American history who was missing from the 1954 series for some strange reason was James Madison. So just like with the Martin Luther King, Jr. stamp, somebody needs to design a $2 Madison stamp for this renewed series. I think I'd make it a deep yellow orange. Stamp collectors care about these things, you know.

We had a $5 stamp back then, which was the highest value in the group. It can stay just as it was. This should be the rate for standard packages, which is now $4.95, also a ridiculous number.





Since we've had so much inflation since 1954, we need a $10 stamp. There was a very nice design from the earlier set that I think would suit very nicely, if slightly redesigned to take into account the new denomination.






I think there should also be a $15 dollar stamp, which should be the price for international express mail instead of the ridiculous denomination used now. There was a wonderful stamp from the old series, but, as you will see, it was in a very small denomination that no longer makes any sense. It can be redesigned to suit for this purpose:






If we should need a $20 dollar stamp, and we probably do, I think maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt should be the subject. But that's just my opinion. If not FDR, then maybe Harriet Beecher Stowe, who for some strange reason did not make it onto a stamp until 2007, despite being one of the most famous and consequential women in American history. I lean toward Stowe over FDR. We can argue this one out later.

There, I feel much better now. I'm sorry that the quality of the stamp illustrations above is not uniform, but this is the best I could do without spending a lot of time searching. Still, I really do feel a lot better.