For broadcast on CBS Radio Network stations
June 13-14, 1998:

Doing it right, after a century.

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries

In 1898, the U-S Post Office Department issued a set of
stamps commemorating the opening and settlement of the
West. They're called the Trans-Mississippi stamps, and
are considered the most-beautiful engraved stamps the U-S
ever produced.

But there was a problem: The Bureau of Engraving and
Printing was supposed to print each of them in two colors,
but couldn't: It needed the production capacity to print
revenue stamps to help fund the Spanish-American War...so
these "Omahas" were printed in a single color.

When the =19=98 re-issues come out next Thursday, they'll
be printed in two colors, as planned a hundred years ago. 

In addition to a sheet of the nine different stamps, there
will be a sheet of just the one-dollar value, "Western
Cattle in Storm," a favorite of collectors.

The stamps will be released at a big show in Anaheim,
called the "Mega-Event," sponsored by the Postal Service
and the American Stamp Dealers Association. It runs
Thursday through Sunday.

And that's stamp collecting this week.

I'm Lloyd de Vries, CBS News. 


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