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Too small!


The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.
 
When something is tiny, it's described as "postage-stamp size," 
but the U.S. once issued stamps that weren't big enough..


In 1978, the Postal Service came up with a bright idea to cut 
costs: Instead of printing the usual 50 or 100 stamps to a sheet, 
it would print 150 on the same-size piece of gummed paper. The 
experimental stamps featured an Indian Head Penny. Each of the 
stamps measured about three-quarters of an inch on each side.


The public, however, didn't like them: They were too small to 
handle, too easy to lose.


Two years later, the Postal Service issued a booklet of windmill 
stamps of the same size, and a single stamp for Dolley Madison. 
And that was the end of the experiment: Since then, while U-S 
stamps are often BIGGER than the flag stamps that carry most of 
our mail, none is smaller.


In fact, that's about the minimum size in ALL countries...and 
it's pretty much the same size as the first stamps ever issued, 
more than 160 years ago.

And that's stamp collecting this week. 


I'm Lloyd de Vries, CBS News. 

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