Philatelic Foreword by Jay Bigalke

The new United States Garden Beauty forever stamps are one of a few recent stamp issues where creativity was used in selecting the first-day city. And others have mentioned that they noticed this, too.

An article about the Garden Beauty stamps can be found on page 1 of the March 1 issue. They will have a Feb. 23 first-day postmark of Bloomfield, Ind., but no event will take place in the town. Located in southwestern Indiana, Bloomfield has a population of approximately 2,400. Even though there won’t be an event, the stamps and postmark will be in the town.

Another interesting town name was chosen for the Barns postcard-rate stamps issued Jan. 24. It was Barnesville, Ga., a town of approximately 6,750 situated between Atlanta and Macon.

The only downside to this Barnesville postmark was that Jan. 24 was a Sunday, so nobody was able to get the postmark on the issue date.

Still, it was nice having an appropriate postmark to go with the stamps.

Other selections have been geographically appropriate to the stamp subject, which is also important to first-day cover collectors when they look back through their collections.

To this day I still laugh about the fact that the 40¢ Rio Grande Texas airmail stamp (Scott C134) was issued in July 1999 in Milwaukee, Wis. It was at a stamp show and in conjunction with another aviation stamp release, but the Milwaukee postmark looks odd on the covers in my collection without that context.

I look forward to seeing what U.S. Postal Service officials come up with for future issuances this year.

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