Traditionally, the U.S. Post Office has catered to stamp collectors rather than marketing stamps towards non-collectors. Apparently this tradition is falling by the wayside.

The Inspector General of the U.S. Post Office says that the post office’s stamp distribution is a mess. Commemorative stamps are failing to reach many of the post offices in a timely manner for distribution after the series is issued. The report states that “Significant Improvements” will be require

Recently the Post Office issued a series of stamps that honors the Harry Potter characters. What is radical about them is that some of the stamps feature the images of the actors playing the various Harry Potter characters. Here the Post Office is getting into a grey area.

One of the most interesting stamp lotteries is underway at a post office near you. With a move, guaranteed to drive many stamp collectors bonkers, The U.S. Postal service has intentionally issued 100 souvenir sheets of six $2 Inverted Jenny stamps with the plane right-side up.

Beginning in 1852, federal law required full postage to be paid on all letters transported and delivered out of the mails by enclosing them in sealed, dated, and canceled stamped envelopes.

Actually the stamps aren’t really inverted, but here is some of the details on this limited edition stamp. The original Inverted Jenny’s pictured a Jenny airplane flying upside down or “inverted.” On October 2, 2013 the Post Office issued a small number of their new Jenny stamps featuring the plane

The market value of any stamp is what you pay for the item. That price could be above or below catalog value, particularly if the grade is higher than called for in the stamp catalog.

A stamp has many stories it can tell you, if you only look behind it.

Stamp collectors refer to the adhesive substance on the back of a stamp, which traditionally needed to be moistened to stick the stamp to an envelope as “gum.” The term is taken from the words gum arabic, which is a derivative of the acacia tree.

Stamp collecting has a much larger body of literature and resources than most other hobbies. There are specialized stamp-collecting libraries, which are open as research facilities, and have handbooks and monographs numbering well into the thousands.