US Stamps

Format of Goodnight Moon pane a pain for collectors

Jan 21, 2025, 12 PM
The new United States Goodnight Moon commemorative forever stamps with eight different designs. Based on the preliminary layout unveiled by the Postal Service, there is no block with the eight designs together.

Philatelic Foreword by Jay Bigalke

On Jan. 13, the United States Postal Service unveiled eight new commemorative forever stamps honoring the children’s book Goodnight Moon. An article on the new stamp issue appears in the Feb. 3 issue of Linn’s.

The layout is similar to the pane of 20 for the Peanuts commemorative forever stamps (Scott 5726) issued Sept. 30, 2022. The sheet of 20 stamps (two stamps of each design) was arranged with a central label showing Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz.

A preliminary image of the Goodnight Moon forever stamp pane is shown nearby. It too has a label positioned in the second and third rows in the center of the pane.

The label is in the upper half of the pane with a block of eight stamps around the sides and top of the label and then a block of eight stamps in two rows of four beneath the label. But here’s the unfortunate catch for collectors. Because of the placement of two Painting of a Cow stamps in the upper half of the pane and two Bedside Table stamps in the bottom half underneath the label, there isn’t a block of eight stamps with different designs together anywhere on the pane.

If the stamps haven’t been printed yet, I would strongly encourage the USPS to reconsider the layout of the pane so that the top three rows of stamps that surround the label include the eight different designs as well as the bottom two rows beneath the label having each design.

The current layout might be pleasing to a designer, but if the pane is issued this way, it would be a headache for collectors who would like blocks of the eight different designs and Scott catalog editors who will have to determine what to do when numbering the stamps.

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