Mystic Stamp Learning Hub

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  • Kiauchau

    Throughout the late nineteenth century Germany was as involved as any European power in the fight to carve up China for political and commercial advantage. They contracted for land by the bay of Jiaozhou (or as they spelled it, Kiauchau) in northern China in 1898.
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  • Officials

    Another area in which United States philately differs from nearly all the rest of the world is in our Official Stamps. In 1873 the Post Office issued a series of stamps for the various government agencies that used stamps.
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  • United States Stamps

    Because of its familiarity to most American philatelists, we tend not to appreciate just how difficult collecting United States stamps is compared to collecting the stamps of most other countries.
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  • The First United States Postage Stamp

    The issuance of postage stamps was one of the great technological and commercial innovations of the nineteenth century.
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  • USPS Unveils Barbara Bush Stamp

    At the White House on May 8, the US Postal Service revealed the artwork of a commemorative Forever stamp to celebrate the centennial year of former first lady Barbara Bush’s birth.
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  • Hermes and the Stamps of Greece

    There is no more appropriate stamp design than the portrait of Hermes, the messenger god in his winged helmet, on the first stamps of Greece.
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  • U.S. Postal Service Announces Stamps Celebrating Its 250th Anniversary

    On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established a postal system for the United Colonies and appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general.
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  • Check Letters

    Check letters are simple a way of indicating where in the sheet a stamp was printed.
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  • Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898

    Despite the unpopularity of its first commemorative set, the Columbian Exposition issue of 1893, the United States Post Office commemorated the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition with their own set of commemorative stamps in 1898.
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Frequently Asked Questions

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This Day in History

Learn about the history of US stamps with a daily snapshot of this day in US stamp history.

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  • May 15, 2025

    First US Airmail Flight 
    On May 15, 1918, America’s airmail service began when two Curtiss Jennys departed New York and Washington, DC. In the months that followed, pioneering aviators expanded airmail service over the treacherous Allegheny Mountains to Chicago and eventually the west coast.
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