Special Delivery
U.S. Special Delivery began in 1885, when the Post Office set up a faster service for an extra fee. A letter with the special stamp was sent straight from the receiving post office to the addressee, rather than waiting for the next regular delivery on the route.
Congress set the extra fee at a special stamp worth ten cents, which was added to the regular postage. The first Special Delivery stamp was printed by the American Bank Note Company and issued on October 1, 1885. It could not be used to prepay postage, and it read “Secures immediate delivery at a special delivery office”. The early stamps showed a running messenger.
At first the service was limited to post offices in places with populations of 4,000 or more, and it could not promise delivery by a set time. In 1886 Congress extended it to all post offices, and a new stamp that read “at any post office” was designed. However, the Post Office did not release it until 1888, which let supplies of the first issue be sold first. Basically, the service lasted until 1997.
Note
Normally, I wouldn’t buy used stamps like I have here. But these stamps unused are a little expensive. Rather than leave the page empty, when I put together an order for stamps, other stamps such as odd deviations of recent definitives, the total cost isn’t very much. To meet the minimum requirement, sometimes I will add one of these used stamps. That’s how I acquired these few used stamps.
Contains 11 spots: own 6 – 1 unused, 5 used.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
E1 |
10 (oct 1885) |
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E2 |
10 (sep 1888) |
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✓ |
E3 |
10 (jan 1893) |
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✗ |
E4 |
10 (oct 1894) |
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✗ |
E5 |
10 (aug 1895) |
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E7 |
10 (dec 1908) |
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✗ |
E6 |
10 (dec 1902) |
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✗ |
E8 |
10 (jan 1911) |
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E9 |
10 (sep 1914) |
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✗ |
E10 |
10 (oct 1916) |
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E11 |
10 (may 1917) |
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.
