Machin 50th anniversary, the Brunswick Circus Girl, and the end of U.S. postage due stamps: Inside Linn’s Stamp News

By Charles Snee

It’s Friday afternoon, and we just sent the June 12 issue of Linn’s Stamp News to the press. Here we present a few teasers of exclusive content from our latest digital edition.

All about the Machin stamps, part three of three

In 1967, Great Britain issued its first definitive stamp featuring Arnold Machin’s elegant portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Fifty years later, there are thousands of varieties to collect and cherish. Larry Rosenblum, our Great Britain Philately columnist, concludes his wonderful three-part series on the Machins with a review of various security features, booklet formats, and more.

What do you know about the obscure Brunswick Circus Girl?

In this month’s The Odd Lot, Wayne L. Youngblood serves up an entertaining review of the origins of this delightful cinderella, or stamp-like label, that mimics the Brunswick original issued in 1865. As Youngblood explains, “The genesis of the Circus Girl, however, is much more innocent and fun-loving, and she is far more desirable now than the stamp she parodies.”

Oct. 2, 1986: an important date in the history of U.S. postage due stamps

On that date, as Anthony Wawrukiewicz explains in Modern U.S. Mail, the U.S. Postal Service announced: “Effective immediately, postage due stamps will no longer be used. Procedures are changed to eliminate the use of postage due stamps on postage due mail.” The ramifications of that decision have echoed down through the past 30 years, yielding some fascinating postal history in the process.

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