Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
I can also see the point in issuing a one-off stamp to commemorate a specific and unrepeatable incident, such as when England won the football World Cup in 1966 and a single overprinted stamp was issued to mark the (evidently unrepeatable) occasion. Generally, however, the UK does not go in for the single issue.
Other countries do. Is there a commercial or other rationale behind this? My study of Soviet stamps of the 1950s shows that in 1952 there was a sudden explosion of single issues (four in 1951, but 18 the following year and a continuation of this policy throughout the rest of the decade). Can anyone suggest what might prompt this, either in the USSR or in other countries where it happens?
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The US still does issue single stamps to commemorate events, people and things. Those stamps are issued at the then current first class rate. As you intimated, issuing sets of various postage rates, including the higher rates where the stamps probably won't get much usage considering who would buy the sets is just a money grab.
Linn's is reporting this week that the USPS is wondering why sales at the Stamp Fulfillment Center are falling along with the profit margins of the stamps sold. Could it be all the multiple stamps that are being issued that people are tiring of buying and/or don't have the money for? The USPS solution is to propose increasing the service fees that are charged to fill orders through the Stamp Fulfillment Center. Yeah, that'll do it. People aren't buying the product, so charge more to get the product that people aren't ordering. That'll increase the profit margin....
A monthly look at all the new issues reported in the Scott Catalog Update, and the Gibbons monthly updates as well, show more and more countries issuing sheets of multiple designs. Single stamps are slowly being eliminated as stamps are no longer being issued for postal purposes. More money grabs. However, not too long ago, Linn's reported that many countries are cutting back on the quantity of each stamp issue being produced because of lack of sales.
Does any of this make any sense?
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The USPS marketing mavens have long had their hands on the wallets of collectors and longer missed their pulse.
Entire classes of collectors have been eliminated: Plate blocks and PNCs to name two recent casualties. They cannot be replaced by the far fewer mini-sheet collectors the USPS envisioned would materialize.
PNC collectors, and I was one, supported cadres of dealers who bought enormous quantities of coils, and ditched nearly as large amounts as scrap. Tons of that stuff is still floating. But we were a dedicated lot, and that kind of following isn't easily replaced. It is easier and cheaper to keep a collector than to create a new one; and far more profitable to keep one who is focused on a series or area, than to try to tempt him into something else. I'd venture to say the the bulk of us merely abandoned PNCs without adding another USPS-produced strain.
Anyway, the disdain that marketing has long shown collectors remains fully in place.
more to spend on covers, that's what I say....
David
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I think we can agree that both US and UK collectors deplore the stamp-issuing policy of their respective countries, desperate to make money even as the postal use of stamps dwindles to the point of extinction.
Nevertheless the subjects of these issues are still chosen with some reference to what is significant (or even 'what is best') about our countries - unlike other stamp-issuing entities who produce wholly for the topical/penny-packet trade. To return to my original point, can you tell me from Scott catalogues how many single issue stamps there have been from the USA in, say, the last couple of years? I do not think we have had any in the UK, although I am open to correction here. That is not the case, I think, in France or Germany.
I suppose at the back of my mind I have this image of national stamp-issuing departments firing off issues more or less at random, subject only to self-imposed limits. "Let's do thirteen sets this year, each of five or six stamps; let's have four mini-sheets; now let's pass it over to the panel to decide the subjects; then to randomly-selected designers to come up with something the Queen (in the UK that is) will approve; job done."
Has anyone any evidence that this is not how it is done?
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Here in the US, there is a "Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee". They take proposals for new stamp designs and choose which ones go to the postmaster general. That still doesn't explain how they decide how many to release.
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If you just go by strictly commeoratives (no special issues - holidays, new year, Purple Heart, love, butterfly, wedding souvenir sheets, definitives, celebrate, etc.) for USA:
2013 = 9
2012 = 12
2011 = 10
2010 = 9
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Sean, that seems very similar to the system we have in the UK. The only decision tied to the name of a 'stamp supremo' of which I know was the move to more frequent commemorative stamps (and the reduction of the Queen's image) instituted by Postmaster-General Tony Benn back in the mid-1960s. However, we abolished the post of PMG in 1969, since when there has been a committee in variously the 'Post Office', 'Royal Mail', 'Royal Mail plc' and whatnot else. It seems likely, then, the stamp issuing policy emanates from the whim of a single chairman somewhere, who may or may not give a toss as to how many sets, single issues, minisheets, etc., he (and I bet it is a he) decrees, and the pattern continues by laissez-faire and short-lived tradition.
Michael, thanks for your list, which suggests that the single issue is alive and well in the US. Some of them are possibly additions to long-running series - maybe your authorities think that people will not buy them except in this way. If, that is, the main point has now become to sell a product to collectors.
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Ian, I left out the single stamp issues that are part of long-running series, like the Chinese New Year and love stamps. I counted only those stamps that were issued as one stamp to commemorate an event or person.
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What, I wonder, is the point of issuing a single stamp rather than a set of stamps? Here in the UK the Royal Mail have long followed a policy of issuing sets of 'special' stamps, generally featuring obscure high values of no real purpose apart from bumping up the price of the set. I can see the point in this, however unattractive I may consider it to be.
I can also see the point in issuing a one-off stamp to commemorate a specific and unrepeatable incident, such as when England won the football World Cup in 1966 and a single overprinted stamp was issued to mark the (evidently unrepeatable) occasion. Generally, however, the UK does not go in for the single issue.
Other countries do. Is there a commercial or other rationale behind this? My study of Soviet stamps of the 1950s shows that in 1952 there was a sudden explosion of single issues (four in 1951, but 18 the following year and a continuation of this policy throughout the rest of the decade). Can anyone suggest what might prompt this, either in the USSR or in other countries where it happens?
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04:09:14pm
re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
The US still does issue single stamps to commemorate events, people and things. Those stamps are issued at the then current first class rate. As you intimated, issuing sets of various postage rates, including the higher rates where the stamps probably won't get much usage considering who would buy the sets is just a money grab.
Linn's is reporting this week that the USPS is wondering why sales at the Stamp Fulfillment Center are falling along with the profit margins of the stamps sold. Could it be all the multiple stamps that are being issued that people are tiring of buying and/or don't have the money for? The USPS solution is to propose increasing the service fees that are charged to fill orders through the Stamp Fulfillment Center. Yeah, that'll do it. People aren't buying the product, so charge more to get the product that people aren't ordering. That'll increase the profit margin....
A monthly look at all the new issues reported in the Scott Catalog Update, and the Gibbons monthly updates as well, show more and more countries issuing sheets of multiple designs. Single stamps are slowly being eliminated as stamps are no longer being issued for postal purposes. More money grabs. However, not too long ago, Linn's reported that many countries are cutting back on the quantity of each stamp issue being produced because of lack of sales.
Does any of this make any sense?
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re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
The USPS marketing mavens have long had their hands on the wallets of collectors and longer missed their pulse.
Entire classes of collectors have been eliminated: Plate blocks and PNCs to name two recent casualties. They cannot be replaced by the far fewer mini-sheet collectors the USPS envisioned would materialize.
PNC collectors, and I was one, supported cadres of dealers who bought enormous quantities of coils, and ditched nearly as large amounts as scrap. Tons of that stuff is still floating. But we were a dedicated lot, and that kind of following isn't easily replaced. It is easier and cheaper to keep a collector than to create a new one; and far more profitable to keep one who is focused on a series or area, than to try to tempt him into something else. I'd venture to say the the bulk of us merely abandoned PNCs without adding another USPS-produced strain.
Anyway, the disdain that marketing has long shown collectors remains fully in place.
more to spend on covers, that's what I say....
David
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re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
I think we can agree that both US and UK collectors deplore the stamp-issuing policy of their respective countries, desperate to make money even as the postal use of stamps dwindles to the point of extinction.
Nevertheless the subjects of these issues are still chosen with some reference to what is significant (or even 'what is best') about our countries - unlike other stamp-issuing entities who produce wholly for the topical/penny-packet trade. To return to my original point, can you tell me from Scott catalogues how many single issue stamps there have been from the USA in, say, the last couple of years? I do not think we have had any in the UK, although I am open to correction here. That is not the case, I think, in France or Germany.
I suppose at the back of my mind I have this image of national stamp-issuing departments firing off issues more or less at random, subject only to self-imposed limits. "Let's do thirteen sets this year, each of five or six stamps; let's have four mini-sheets; now let's pass it over to the panel to decide the subjects; then to randomly-selected designers to come up with something the Queen (in the UK that is) will approve; job done."
Has anyone any evidence that this is not how it is done?
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this post
re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
Here in the US, there is a "Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee". They take proposals for new stamp designs and choose which ones go to the postmaster general. That still doesn't explain how they decide how many to release.
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01:30:34am
re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
If you just go by strictly commeoratives (no special issues - holidays, new year, Purple Heart, love, butterfly, wedding souvenir sheets, definitives, celebrate, etc.) for USA:
2013 = 9
2012 = 12
2011 = 10
2010 = 9
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this post
re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
Sean, that seems very similar to the system we have in the UK. The only decision tied to the name of a 'stamp supremo' of which I know was the move to more frequent commemorative stamps (and the reduction of the Queen's image) instituted by Postmaster-General Tony Benn back in the mid-1960s. However, we abolished the post of PMG in 1969, since when there has been a committee in variously the 'Post Office', 'Royal Mail', 'Royal Mail plc' and whatnot else. It seems likely, then, the stamp issuing policy emanates from the whim of a single chairman somewhere, who may or may not give a toss as to how many sets, single issues, minisheets, etc., he (and I bet it is a he) decrees, and the pattern continues by laissez-faire and short-lived tradition.
Michael, thanks for your list, which suggests that the single issue is alive and well in the US. Some of them are possibly additions to long-running series - maybe your authorities think that people will not buy them except in this way. If, that is, the main point has now become to sell a product to collectors.
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11:57:05am
re: The 'Single Issue' Stamp
Ian, I left out the single stamp issues that are part of long-running series, like the Chinese New Year and love stamps. I counted only those stamps that were issued as one stamp to commemorate an event or person.
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