The Post Office: Not just books of stamps any more
- By : Nat
- Category : Upcoming releases
So I’m over on the website of the United States Postal Service, looking to pre-order a whole bunch of sheets of the new Peanuts stamps (sorry, officially they are “Charles M. Schulz stamps”, celebrating his centennial, but I don’t see any “It’s Only a Game” stamps in there…) that are about to come out. Really, I want enough that for at least a few years, I don’t have to think “is this letter worth wasting a Peanuts stamp on?” And while I’m there, I decide to check out the other stuff they’re offering related to the Peanuts stamp… because really, one of the points of doing stamp releases like this is to get you to give the post office money for things beyond stamps-that-you-will-then-use-for-postal-service. And my grampa was a philatelist, so I’m used to seeing things like first day covers, special postmarks, presentations of the stamps in a commemorative panel or a portfolio. And there is stuff, like a stationery set, or a pin of the Snoopy stamp.
But is there anything for that most noble sort of human being, the Peanuts book collector?
Well, if you’re the sort of collector that gets everything that might be considered a Peanuts book, there are these little “Field Notes” notebooks, with actual cancelled Peanuts stamps on the cover.
But the real prize is the new postal-themed hardcover strip collection, Nothing Echoes like an Empty Mailbox. This 48-page book has 70 strips, plus tales on the creation of Peanuts , Schulz’s love for correspondence, and the three times the USPS has issued Peanuts stamps. Plus, it comes with a custom cancellation card, for those into cancel culture The listing says it’s for the young and young at heart, but even us Peanuts collectors who find our tickers are showing their age should still like this item.
(Now, you dedicated Peanuts book collectors may be thinking “wait, haven’t I heard that title before?” And you’d be right! Nothing Echoes like an Empty Mailbox was a 1995 strip reprint, part of the Peanuts Classics series.)
If you’re interested in any of these, go preorder them. Some of them may end up available at your local post office, but by getting them now you avoid worrying about whether you will find them, plus they’ll be “delivered to your door by a uniformed agent of the U.S. government,” as the old ads used to say.
