David Williams: U.S. stamps go full throttle for 250th anniversary

It’s only been a week since the United States celebrated the nation’s semi-quincentennial, which included – among many, many other things – the issuing of a massive, almost overwhelming amount of new postage. While we continue to live in a climate of political and economic uncertainty that includes everything from CUSMA and President Donald Trump’s [...]

Article content It’s only been a week since the United States celebrated the nation’s semi-quincentennial, which included – among many, many other things – the issuing of a massive, almost overwhelming amount of new postage. While we continue to live in a climate of political and economic uncertainty that includes everything from CUSMA and President Donald Trump’s interest in making Canada the 51st state, the binge-worthy production of new postage for its 250th anniversary has been pretty hard to ignore, especially for those who collect postage from below the 49th parallel.

Some highlights from the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) 2026 stamp program include: - A pane of 25 stamps called Figures of the American Revolution that has 25 different portraits of key people who established U.S. independence. - A definitive Declaration of Independence stamp depicting the numerals 1776 in the shape of a feather quill pen.

It is available in a sheet of 20, a book of 20 and a coil of 100. There is also a coil of 3,000 (which costs $2,340 USD). - A pane of 13 stamps called American Icons that features quintessential American imagery, and which the USPS notes is the first time in its history that it invited a single individual, fashion designer Ralph Lauren, to oversee an entire stamp program.

- A prestige booklet called Treasures of the Revolutionary Era that contains 20 stamps. - 25 different first-day covers featuring U.S. flag stamps. -

A special cover with a Declaration of Independence cachet that has portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. A Franklin stamp that was issued last July to mark the USPS’s 250th anniversary is considered by some to be a part of the U.S. anniversary issues, as opposed to this year’s T-shirt sporting the Franklin stamp. Our philatelic relationships with the U.S. were mostly cordial in the past.

Five or six decades ago, it was almost considered de rigueur for Canadian youngsters to include American postage in their albums. Old-time collectors will remember not only ordering stamps from the famous Mystic Stamp Co. in Camden, N.Y., but also our own Garcelon Stamp Co. in St. Stephen, which would use the post office across the bridge in Bangor to mail them to you. Franklin, of course, has been pictured twice on Canadian postage.

In 2013 it was a stamp in which Canada Post saluted the 250th anniversary of Canadian postal history. In 1976, Canada and the U.S. had a joint stamp issue celebrating the U.S. bicentennial. This year, there was no stamp from Canada to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. founding.

And it was just weeks ago that we learned the president of The Royal Philatelic Society of Canada (RPSC) resigned over what he called the “current politics” of the U.S. administration, and his decision not to attend the Boston 2026 World Stamp Expo in May. That was the same World Stamp Expo that Canada Post announced it would not be attending. Who said stamp collecting is dull and uninteresting?

David Williams is president of the Saint John Stamp Club. He can be reached at madwill@nbnet.nb.ca