Reference

Dating a postcard by its stamp

A stamp gives you one thing reliably: a card cannot have been mailed before the stamp was issued. That makes the everyday “workhorse” definitives a hard floor under any date. What a stamp will not give you is a ceiling — these stayed on sale, and in desk drawers, for years afterwards. Use the issue date as the earliest possible mailing, then let the postmark, the printing and the publisher narrow it.

Each entry below is a stamp from a card in our own collection. We describe stamps by name, denomination, colour, series and issue year — all public facts — and never by catalogue number.

2¢ Thomas Jefferson — Liberty series

carmine rose · 2¢ · first issued 1954

A 2-cent carmine rose Thomas Jefferson stamp of the Liberty series on a postcard, from the Postcard Origins collection — First placed on sale 15 September 1954, in San Francisco.Scanned from the Postcard Origins collection

A card carrying this stamp was mailed in or after September 1954.

Issued to cover the 2¢ postcard rate, so it turns up constantly on mid-1950s cards.

The Liberty series ran from 1954 and was generally replaced by the Prominent Americans series from 1965 — but the 2¢ value was reprinted as a coil and sold well into the 1980s, so it is a weak upper bound.

Sources: Liberty series 2¢ Jefferson, first day 15 September 1954: Mystic Stamp Company reference; Liberty issue overview: Wikipedia

3¢ Statue of Liberty — Liberty series

deep violet · 3¢ · first issued 1954

A 3-cent deep violet Statue of Liberty stamp of the Liberty series on a postcard, from the Postcard Origins collection — First placed on sale 24 June 1954, in Albany, New York.Scanned from the Postcard Origins collection

A card carrying this stamp was mailed in or after June 1954.

The 3¢ value covered the first-class letter rate; on a postcard it usually means the sender overpaid, or the card travelled at letter rate.

Notable as the first definitive in this series to carry the motto “In God We Trust,” and unusual in showing the Statue of Liberty rather than a president.

Sources: Liberty series 3¢ Statue of Liberty, issue date 24 June 1954, Albany NY: Mystic Stamp Company reference

8¢ Dwight D. Eisenhower — Prominent Americans series

black, red and blue grey · 8¢ · first issued 1971

An 8-cent Dwight D. Eisenhower stamp of the Prominent Americans series on a postcard, from the Postcard Origins collection — First placed on sale 10 May 1971, in Washington, D.C..Scanned from the Postcard Origins collection

A card carrying this stamp was mailed in or after May 1971.

Issued in sheet, coil and booklet form on the same day; a 6¢ Eisenhower of similar design came first.

A useful late bound: an Eisenhower 8¢ rules out the whole linen era and most of the early chrome era.

Sources: 8¢ Eisenhower first day of issue 10 May 1971, Washington D.C.: US Postal Service commemorative stamp poster record (Monthly Catalog); Mystic Stamp Company reference

Postage rates are a separate clue with its own tool: see the postage-rate lookup. And the marking printed over the stamp is often the sharpest evidence on the card — see postmarks and cancels.