Letters

The strip of stamps on the left side of this album page were issued in 1980 to promote National Letter Writing Day, which was on February 25 that year. That day was during National Letter Writing Week, which was from February 24 to March 1. The Post Office promoted it with the National Council of Teachers of English, along with several influential people in the country. In later years, National Letter Writing Day was changed to December 7. There’s also a World Letter Writing Day, which is on September 1. I’m not sure why the U.S. doesn’t do it on the same day.

At this point, letter writing is fairly non-existent in most people’s lives. It’s been decades since I last received a hand-written letter from any one. For a while, people used email, instead, but even that has dwindled to almost nothing. Most people use chatting applications or post messages on social networking sites for spontaneous thoughts with few words, plenty of abbreviations, poor grammar, and emotional icons.

Letters are one-side-at-a-time conversations that tend to be more thought through than speaking in person or on the telephone – or the like. You can take your time to think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. You can have the pleasure of using nice paper and envelope, as well as a good pen – if you appreciate those things. It’s really a lost art, a contemplative part of past lives.

Despite what I say about missing letters, I no longer write letters. However, I still write and send postcards. I enjoy sending them and have found that people are thrilled to receive them. When I’m with someone visiting from out-of-town, especially from another country, or when I’m traveling with someone else, I try to encourage them to send a postcard to someone. They often will resist the idea because they’ve never sent or received a postcard. They’re also unsure how to write a postcard, what to say and so forth. With a little bit coaxing and coaching, they’ll send a postcard to someone. Without fail, a few weeks later I hear from them saying the postcard was appreciated immensely and that they’re now sold on always sending postcards when traveling.

Note

This strip of letter-writing stamps include selvage, that extra paper along the edge and at the top of this strip. I almost always remove the selvage. Some people prefer stamps with selvage – or are at least they’re indifferent about it. I don’t like it. I think it looks nicer without the extra bits.

For this set of stamps, though, Leuchtturm allocated enough space for the selvage. These stamps come from a sheet of stamps, so the stamp mount was cut assuming on collectors getting the strips from the edge and probably not the middle. Anyway, I don’t like it, but I’ve cooperated with for this set.

Contains 15 spots: own 14 – 14 unused, 0 used.
Album or Web Page Last changed May 16, 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

Love & Greetings

1.1	✓	1810	P.S. Write Soon	15c (feb 1980) comm., multicolor
1.2	✓	1806	P.S. Write Soon	15c (feb 1980) comm., multicolor
1.3	✓	1808	P.S. Write Soon	15c (feb 1980) comm., multicolor
2.1	✓	1805	Letters Preserve Memories	15c (feb 1980) comm., multicolor
2.2	✓	1807	Letters Lift Spirits	15c (feb 1980) comm., multicolor
2.3	✓	1809	Letters Shape Opinions	15c (feb 1980) comm., multicolor

Flag Series

3.1	✓	1890	Amber Waves of Grain	18c (apr 1981) definitive, multicolor
3.2		1894	Supreme Court	20c (dec 1981) definitive, red, black, & dark blue
3.3	✓	1894e	Supreme Court	20c (dec 1981) definitive, red & black & dark blue

Eagle Series

4.1	✓	1735	Emblem of US Post	A (may 1978) definitive, orange
4.2	✓	1735c	Eagle	A (may 1978) definitive, orange
4.3	✓	1818	Eagle	B (mar 1981) definitive, violet
4.4	✓	1946	Eagle	C (oct 1981) definitive, dark orange brown

Love & Greetings

5.1	✓	1951	Love	20c (feb 1982) comm., multicolor
5.2	✓	1951A	Love	20c (feb 1982) comm., multicolor

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.