In 1898, eleven proprietary drug companies, 10 in St. Louis, made a deal with the IRS to print their own proprietary tax stamps for use until the delayed federal tax stamps arrived. These came to be known as the St. Louis Provisionals. Want one? Get your checkbook out. Most of them have a five-figure value!

Austria-Hungary was the first country to issue a postal card (Correspondenz-Karte) on October 1st, 1869. The U.S> didn’t issue a postal card until 1873.

We often talk about countries that were the first to issue a stamp of some type, but what about the last? The latest country to issue its first postage stamp is Sark, a dependency of the UK, on 27 August 2025.

According to the American Topical Association, there have been 1,007 different stamps issued to honor Princess Diana. This number may not be all of them, either.

Stay Tuned in… The earliest known world philatelic exhibition that’s close to resembling what we know today took place in November, 1881 in Vienna Austria. Then in 1890, London hosted the International, and that show was really the precursor to what the international shows have become today.

The earliest known world philatelic exhibition took place in 1862 in London, England. However, it was not anything like the international exhibition we know today. That came later. Stay Tuned.

The first day ceremony for the sesquicentennial of the Oregon Trail (Scott #2747) was originally to be held on February 14th, 1993, in Oregon City, OR, the terminus of the trail. A month before the ceremony, the USPS changed it to Salem, OR. The backlash resulted in 39 cities along the Oregon Trail being designated as official first-day-of-issue cities.

One theory as to the origin of the tête-bêche varieties of the Ceres heads of France comes from deliberately replacing a damaged cliché with an inverted one. The head of stamp printing could then, at a glance, tell where the plate had been repaired. These varieties are highly sought after by collectors.

The 1932 Olympic Games stamps were not just used to promote the 1oth Olympiad in Los Angeles, but also for political purposes. George Linn, owner of Linn’s and publisher of Linn’s Weekly Stamp News, was an avid supporter of Franklin Roosevelt during his campaign for President. He and the public used the stamps on covers with cachets supporting a “Stamp Collector for President.”

My wife asked me if there was a stamp with her favorite breed of dog on it, and when it was first issued. I told her, probably, but I didn’t know. I had to do some searching. I found it, I think, in Romania in 1965. I also think that there are about a dozen countries to issue such a stamp, but I can’t say that for certain, as the internet is iffy, and I don’t have a worldwide set of Scott catalogs to look it up by subject. The breed…Dachshund. Hmm…I thought her favorite breed was a Min-Pin (Miniature Pinscher)!.