U.S. semipostal sales update

Philatelic Foreword by Jay Bigalke

The article on the Breast Cancer Research semipostal issue on page 10 of the Feb. 10 Linn’s got me thinking about semipostal stamps again.

It’s been a while since we published an update on the semipostal stamp program, so I thought a brief recap here would be helpful.

The Healing PTSD semipostal stamp (Scott B7) was issued Dec. 2, 2019, with a total of 40 million stamps produced. According to sales information provided by the United States Postal Service on its website, sales of this semipostal stamp through December 2024 have totaled 19 million and have raised $2 million for research.

Sales for the Healing PTSD stamp have done considerably better than the Alzheimer’s Awareness semipostal (Scott B6), the only other stamp that is part of the Postal Service’s discretionary semipostal program. Since it was issued Nov. 30, 2017, with 65 million printed, only 12 million Alzheimer’s Awareness stamps have been sold with approximately $1.6 million being raised.

Two semipostal stamps that were mandated by Congress, the Breast Cancer Research (Scott B1, B5) and Save Vanishing Species stamps (B4), remain on sale at post offices.

As of December 2024, the Breast Cancer Research stamp, which was first issued in 1998, has raised $98 million with more than 1.1 billion stamps sold. Because of these sales, the stamp has been sent back to press multiple times.

The Save Vanishing Species semipostal, issued in 2011, has raised $8 million with more than 70 million stamps sold. A total of 100 million stamps were produced.

The sales numbers for semipostals are updated on a more or less monthly basis on the Postal Service website.

For those interested in the funds raised by semipostal issues for these causes, the aforementioned webpage is a good resource.

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