I sent out a LOT of mail. That means many trips to the Post Office, or at least it did. I recently discovered the joy of ordering online. I tried downloading software to print my own postage, but that didn't work and I just gave up and ordered stamps. I ordered a LOT of stamps. It annoyed me that they charged me a buck surcharge, but I figured it was actually worth it because I would've made more than a dollar's worth of trips to the P.O. for all the postage I bought.
I don't like boring stamps. I mean, the forever stamp has got to be one of THE most boring stamps every printed. (Okay, I'm pretty sick of the generic flag ones, too. Even the 50-coil 44-cent flags of the US only have 14 states and the US flag interspersed. BORING.)
I like interesting stamps. For a while there, I was buying tropical fish stamps, but lovely as they were, there were only 10 to a sheet, and it was kinda hard to find the fish among all the sea weed and stuff. And it turns out that our little P.O. just doesn't have the variety that's out there. Shopping online I found 17-cent goat stamps. How cool is that. (Okay, I have this thing about goats. Hubby and I look for our goat of the day, on TV, in books, online, and especially when driving around in the car.) What the heck. I bought a page of them. [UPDATE: Okay, it turns out that's not a goat, it's a sheep. Can you tell I was not brought up on a farm?]
Last year, I bought a LOT of Edgar Allan Poe stamps. I mean, how cool is that for a mystery author to put a stamp (and it's a very nice stamp, too) of the father of the modern mystery on every single letter. I was very disappointed when our local Post Master told me there were no more Poe stamps to be had. Gone. Everywhere. Ah, not so I discovered online. They're there for the asking. So I bought three sheets. And I wondered if maybe I should have bought more. Okay, they're 42 cents and I have to use a 2-cent stamp along with it, but still, I'm back to being cool when I mail out bookmarks.
But it seems to me that compared to other countries, we have some pretty boring stamps. I love it at Christmastime when I get cards from my relatives overseas and can see the beautiful stamps their country has issued. The non-religious X-mas stamps this year looked ... well, like a high school art project.
As a kid, I collected stamps and I was more aware of the wonderful stamps from other countries. Canada has always had lovely stamps. And they issue them on on a variety of wonderful subjects. The Internet is a wonderful place to find all kinds of oddball stuff and I came across these wonderful cat stamps from Sweden. Now, why can't we have cool stamps like that? (Okay, I might be biased because I have black cats.)
Have you ever had a favorite stamp? (Elvis counts!)
