United States of America

When I was twelve years old, a friend of my father named Chuck, gave me the MacArthur stamp shown here. He was a stamp collector and showed me his collection one evening when we were visiting him and his wife. He gave me this stamp to start my collection. Little did he know – nor did I know – that so much would follow.

First I started with stamps that were available at the post office: the current issues. It was a haphazard accumulation with no idea about what I was missing and included lots of duplicates: I would even buy many of the same stamps. I also started taking stamps off of envelops my family received in the mail, including old letters I found in boxes in our attic.

The U.S. Post Office was selling at the time a book called, U.S. Stamps & Stories. It was a catalog of U.S. stamps made by Scott catalog publisher in 1973. It had stories about most of the stamps, in particular the commemorative ones. I enjoyed that book very much. This helped to build my interest in stamps. It also made me realize what I was missing, showed me past issues I could not buy from the post office.

Eventually, I found a local stamp dealer, a stamp collecting store. There I bought a stock book to hold and display my stamps, and I was able to buy older U.S. stamps. That brought it all together, the obsession with owning all U.S. stamps and lead to what you will see in these pages that follow.

Note

One of the factors that’s slowing this project is the time it takes for me to get the album pages, move my stamps from stock books, then to create an entry in my database for each stamp and assign them to the right page, row, and column. It’s been about two years I’ve been working on updating my collection and putting them on this site. I’m making good progress, but I still haven’t finished just displaying what I already own.

Early Years

The United States started using postage stamps in 1847. Stamps from the early years are a little expensive, as you might expect. I have some of them, but not many since these are from when I was young and didn’t have much money. Now that I have a much better income and have begun refocusing on my stamp collections, I’ve started adding to these pages.

Bureau Stamps

Starting from 1894 until 2005, U.S. stamps were printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Although some of the first few pages are sparse, I have almost all of the stamps from the Warren Harding album page, which are from 1919, until the end of the Twentieth Century.

Post World Wars

These stamps are also from the Bureau of Engraving, but from after the end of World War II, starting in 1946. Of course, that means they’re also after World War I. Hence, the plural title.

Colorful Years

These stamps are also from a time when stamps were much more colorful than in the first century of producing them in the U.S. and around the world. These stamps start with three-color stamps, but in time are printed with several multiple colors.

Bicentennial

These are from the start of the U.S. Bicentennial. That should be starting in 1976, but I included one page from 1975 with the first stamps comemorating that anniversary. At this point these pages go to 1987 – the last page I have so far from Leuchtturm. I may cut off this album at an earlier date after I get more pages from Leuchtturm.