Philosateleia
Kevin Blackston
PO Box 217
Floresville TX 78114-0217
United States of America

Blog archives (February 2022)

VFW, American Lung Association distribute new BREs

Inbound nonprofit mailings over the past two or three weeks have brought a couple more business reply envelopes with faux stamp designs my way. I found the envelope shown here from Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States sitting in one of the recycle bins at my local post office, while the American Lung Association BRE arrived in my PO box last week.

Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States business reply envelope bearing five stamp-sized poppy designs
Veterans of Foreign Wars business reply envelope with preprinted poppy stamp-sized designs
American Lung Association business reply envelope earing five stamp-sized bird and flower designs
American Lung Association business reply envelope with preprinted bird and flower stamp-sized designs

The single design picturing poppies that appears five times on the VFW envelope is interesting in that its borders have an irregular look to them, almost as though they were imperforate stamps that had been roughly torn apart. It’s not even a simulated die cut look. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that particular effect used on one of these preprinted business reply envelopes.

The ALA cover has five different designs depicting various songbirds with flowers, and each design is slightly rotated giving them the appearance of being stamps that were somewhat haphazardly applied to the envelope. I occasionally receive BREs with real stamps applied to them, but that work invariably appears to have been done by a machine with the stamps more or less perfectly aligned. I would rather like to have seen the bird and flower designs here applied in a straight line as well, but that’s just me.

Purgatory Post issues stamp picturing Prentiss Bridge

Purgatory Post continued its series of stamps commemorating New Hampshire covered bridges with the release on February 2 of a 19-sola stamp picturing Prentiss Bridge in Langdon. The design features a black vignette of the bridge set within a blue frame of a type used for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition issue of the United States.

19-sola Purgatory Post stamp picturing Prentiss Bridge
19-sola Purgatory Post Prentiss Bridge stamp

At less than 35 feet long, Prentiss Bridge is the shortest covered bridge in the state of New Hampshire.1 The bridge is the third known to have existed at the site; the first was replaced in the late 18th century, while the current structure was built in 1874.

If you’re new to this blog, Purgatory Post is a private local post based in New Hampshire.

References

  1. Marshall, Richard. Prentiss Bridge. NH.gov. Accessed 13 Feb. 2022.

Marihuana tax, consular service fee album pages added

As part of my continuing effort to expand The Philosateleian U.S. Stamp Album, I’m happy to announce that album pages for marihuana tax stamps and consular service fee stamps are now available in my Special 2022 supplement. I uploaded that package this morning, and it’s ready for you to download and print at your convenience.

Real life responsibilities have prevented me from making quite as speedy progress on pages for fiscal stamps as I would like, but I’m still working on pages for other revenue categories and will share those as I finish them.

My next regular update for The Philosateleian should be ready in early March. Stay tuned!