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Hanukkah gets stood up

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

After much hemming and hawing, the U-S Postal Service last month finally announced that its
2013 Hanukkah stamp would be issued November 19th, about a week before the Jewish holiday begins.

Then, on a Friday afternoon, the Postal Service said the new stamp was going on sale the next
day — 10 days early. It says there was “strong customer demand,” and, yes, there were requests
for an earlier release — probably because Jewish customers saw the Christmas stamps already on
sale.

There are stamp collectors who like to get new issues postmarked on the first day they go on
sale. But with such short notice, most probably never knew they’d been “stood up“ by the sudden
change in dates. In fact, most post offices probably never got the word, and few had the new
stamp for sale.

It’s ironic the announcement came just a few hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath, and
the stamps went on sale on the Sabbath. Much of the intended audience doesn’t buy stamps on
Saturday.

And adding insult to injury... the official postmark commemorating the first day of sale will
still say “November 19th,” not the actual date, the 9th.

It’s another example of Postal Service’s helter-skelter decisions lately about U-S stamps.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting and the latest
information on the “magic slate” that is the U-S stamp program, visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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