Support the USPS

The USPS Logo Used In 1970 | Office retirement party, Loom beading, Postal service logo

If you rely on US Postal Service to receive or send mail or packages I urge you to write to your congressmen and the postmaster general to support USPS:

Have you gotten something important in your mail recently?  Have you sent a letter or package?  Have you had issues with your mail service?  Share your comments with "leadership" in Washington.

I ship thousands of vintage postcards via USPS each month and USPS has always been extremely reliable.  I estimate my rate of lost, delayed or damaged items over the past decade to be maybe 1 in 1000 (1/10 of 1%).  I've never had many issues until this past month - I've never had so many customers complaining about not receiving their items or having items damaged in transit.  Over the past month I would estimate these issues have increased 10x.  If this is any indication, I expect many small businesses and consumers to be outraged and frustrated.   

USPS delivers around 150,000,000,000 (150B) pieces of mail annually.  That's around 500 pieces of mail per person in the US.  Even if only 1% of the mail is being delayed that's over 100 million pieces per month!

People are relying on USPS more than ever now to stay connected and receive packages and other vital mail, yet the current administration and Senate are holding up funds to the USPS as a political tactic.  Hundreds of billions of dollars have gone to large for-profit businesses that already had healthy balance sheets.  The US Postal Service is a service that benefits all Americans, it isn't expected to make a profit.  Postal Rates are set by Congress, and USPS has tried to raise rates, only to be denied.

Some recent editorial:

Trump says he’s blocking Postal Service funding because Democrats want to expand mail-in voting during pandemic

Trump blurts out his true motive on mail-in voting

Trump threatens to block coronavirus funding for USPS if they don't raise prices: 'The postal service is a joke'

Financial disclosures reveal postmaster general's business entanglements and likely conflicts of interest



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Rare" 1c George Washington & Benjamin Franklin Stamps on Postcards

Image
We get a lot of folks that tell us they have a collection of postcards with "Rare Stamps".  Usually they're referring to stamps like these:        These are usually common  Washington–Franklin Issues , issued from 1908–1922,  Benjamin Franklin 1902 series issued from 1902-1917 and US Regular Issues issued from 1922-1931. Most of these stamps were printed in quantities that reach into the billions, so they are definitely not rare by any account.  Just because something is 100+ years old, doesn't make it valuable.  Scarcity and collector demand make things valuable.   "But I just Googled these stamps and they're selling for $50,000!" you say? Perhaps you see something like this: First, it's doubtful that any of those stamps have actually sold for that much.  You need to look at SOLD prices [ebay.com] , and even then many of those sales for common stamps may not actually be real.  There may be a few of these there tha...
Read more

Along the Malibu: The Color Serigraphs and Art of Paul Dubosclard

Image
  Just received a copy of this book.  If you're a collector of California postcards, or you've looked through southern California cards at a show you've most likely seen some of these serigraph cards . I had always thought the artist was Margaret Sheehan, since most of the cards are identified as "Published by M. A. Sheehan, Topanga California" on the back. But these distinctive cards are actually attributed to Paul Dubosclard. Although many are unsigned, a handful have a P. Dubosclard name or stamp on the front:     Many cards also have hand-written titles in pencil, presumably by Dubosclard. The bulk of the book is a catalog of all known works by Dubosclard, highlighting details about many individual cards and the series (US Presidents, State Flags, and Zodiac).  So this serves as a "checklist" for collectors, but also shows a beautifully artistic compilation of different variations of the same serigraphs, as well as showing other similar postca...
Read more