Americana Pairs

The group of definitives on the top three rows depict musical instruments. What’s odd is that they were issued only in coils, not in sheets or booklets. Of course, they’re fractional amounts which only businesses and charity organizations would use.

Saxhorns

On the second row, the first pair of stamps show three horns. These are saxhorns, a valved brass instrument created in the 1830s and 1840s by the Belgian musical instrument inventor, Adolphe Sax – who also invented the saxophone.

On most saxhorns, the mouth piece is located in the middle, near the values, projecting to one side with the bell where sound comes out, pointing upwards of direction the musician is facing. On these particular saxhorns, though, the bell face backwards, project behind and past the musician’s head. These were used during the American Civil War by muarching bands so that the troops marching behinid them could hear the music and thereby march to it.

Note

The first four rows of stamps were printed with presses that make lines at the end of each round of printing, known as joint lines (see the Line Pairs album page). If you look closely at the ones on the top four rows, you’ll see that almost all of them have joint lines – the left stamp of each pair is from a different printing than the right stamp. The stamps on the bottom row, though, were made with a different type of press that don’t make joint lines. This will be the way as you move forward in the definitive album pages – until none of them have joint lines, and Leuchtturm allocates space for only one coil stamp, instead of pairs.

Contains 13 spots: own 13 – 13 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed May 17, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot

own

catalog

subject

description

comment

Americana Definitives

1.1	✓	1811	Inkwell & Quill	1c (mar 1980) definitive, dark blue
1.2	✓	1613	Six String Guitar	3.10c (jan 1979) definitive, brown
1.3	✓	1813	Weaver Violins	3.50c (jun 1980) definitive, purple
2.1	✓	1614	Saxhorns	7.70c (nov 1976) definitive, brown
2.2	✓	1615	Drum	7.90c (apr 1976) definitive, carmine
2.3	✓	1615C	Steinway Grand Piano	8.40c (jul 1978) definitive, blue
3.1	✓	1616	Capitol’s Dome	9c (mar 1976) definitive, slate green
3.2	✓	1617	Contemplation of Justice J.E. Fraser	10c (nov 1977) definitive, violet
3.3	✓	1816	Statue of Liberty’s Torch	12c (apr 1981) definitive, red brown
4.1	✓	1618	Liberty Bell	13c (nov 1975) definitive, brown
4.2	✓	1619	Statue of Liberty	16c (mar 1978) definitive, blue
5.1	✓	1618C	Fort McHenry Flag	15c (jun 1978) definitive, multicolor
5.2	✓	1619a	Statue of Liberty	16c (mar 1978) definitive, blue

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.