Sunday, January 2, 2011

Holiday postage stamp choices

About halfway through the holiday correspondence season, it occurred to me that, since I always notice what stamps people choose to put on their envelopes, why not make a survey of it. I already had a little stack of stamps from the cards we had received so far, but since I don't usually save stamps I find uninteresting (namely, the Liberty Bell and flag ones, although I'll grant that the newer flag ones are more artistic looking than the old ones), this isn't a very accurate accounting. Even so, of the 30 or so cards we received, I have 18 stamps. I'm going to assume that most of the 12 I didn't save were Liberty Bell forever stamps, because I remember noticing quite a few of those and wondering why people were using them when there are new forever stamps with images of evergreen trees on them. Of course, I do know why--because they bought a roll of 100 of the forever stamps and they're going to use them up before buying more stamps.

I know you're dying to know the results of my stamp survey, so, here we go. Of the 18 stamps I saved, evergreens are the clear winners, with all other categories, including the more explicit Christmas stamps, trailing far behind:



evergreens — 10
flags — 2
Liberty Bells — 2
Miss Liberty — 1
lute player — 1
Madonna and child — 1
English Christmas stamp featuring a snow-covered postbox and cartoon character — 2 stamps, both on one envelope
Original artwork matching the card, on a Zazzle stamp — 1

So there you have it.

3 comments:

  1. It's Gromit on the English stamp! How wonderful!

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  2. Love the zazzle handpainted cardinal and the english cartoon. For an 86 year old client, I cut her handwritten name off of all the envelopes and several stamps and made a collage with headline "Jane Doe is in the hearts and thoughts of many."

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  3. Alephette, thanks for IDing the stamp character. It did look familiar, and I know I've heard of Wallace and Gromit before, but I'm not sure where or when.

    Tammy, that's a really great idea.

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