Presidential Issue
Encyclopedia
The Presidential Issue, nicknamed the Prexies by collectors
Stamp collecting
Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is one of the world's most popular hobbies, with the number of collectors in the United States alone estimated to be over 20 million.- Collecting :...

, is the series of definitive
Definitive stamp
A definitive stamp is a postage stamp, that is part of a regular issue of a country's stamps available for sale by the postal service for an extended period of time...

 postage stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

s issued in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1938, featuring all 29 U.S. presidents
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 from George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

 through Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...

. The presidents appear as small profile busts
Bust (sculpture)
A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...

 printed in solid-color designs through 50¢, and then as black on white images surrounded by colored lettering and ornamentation for $1, $2, and $5 values. Additional stamps in fractional-cent denominations offer busts of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

 and Martha Washington
Martha Washington
Martha Dandridge Custis Washington was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington is considered to be the first First Lady of the United States...

, as well as an engraving of the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

. With its total of 32 stamps, this was the largest definitive series yet issued by the U. S. Post Office.

In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

, himself a serious stamp collector, fostered the idea of a set of stamps honoring all the deceased past presidents of the United States. A national contest was held in 1937 to choose a designer for the first stamp of the series, the 1-cent George Washington issue. More than eleven hundred entries were submitted, some from famous artists. An artist from New York, Elaine Rawlinson, won the contest. Her design for the 1-cent stamp showed Washington in profile, modeled after a bust by the famous sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon
Jean-Antoine Houdon
Jean-Antoine Houdon was a French neoclassical sculptor. Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and political figures of the Enlightenment...

, and became the template for the new definitive series issued in 1938.

The Presidential Issues of 1938

The models for the engravings used in the printing of the various issues were obtained from a number of different sources, from paintings to sculptures to bronze statues, all reproduced in a relatively uniform intaglio style on steel dies. The overall stamp design incorporates a solid background of color. On the values up to 50-cents, the name of each subject appears in capital letters to the right of the bust, with the years of his presidential tenure beneath it (no dates are provided for the non-presidents Franklin and Martha Washington). On denominations from 10-cents through 19-cents a single-line border is added, while a double-line border surrounds the values between 20 and 50 cents. The 1, 2 and 5-dollar values have their own design which places colored columns and stars on either side of the black-and-white presidential portrait, and displays the president's name and the dates of his tenure beneath his image.

Selected Issues








Design competition

On June 22, 1937, the Treasury Department
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...

 announced a national design competition for a new regular series of postage stamps, with a submission deadline of September 15, 1937, offering prizes of $500, $300 and $200 for the three top entrants. The panel of judges included philatelic specialists and art experts. Several eliminations took place for the more than eleven hundred submitted designs, and the remaining entries were scored on a graduating scale. From these the first prize went to Elaine Rawlinson of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, the second to Charles Bauer of West Orange, New Jersey
West Orange, New Jersey
West Orange is a township in central Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 46,207...

, third to Edwin Hoyt Austin of Delmar
Delmar, New York
Delmar is a hamlet in the town of Bethlehem, Albany County, New York. A census-designated place has been established since 1980 by the US Bureau of Census for tabulating the population of what the census has defined as the boundaries of the urbanized area in and around Delmar. The population was...

, New York. The winning design is reported to not have been voted in first place by any of the judges.

Some entrants submitted multiple designs, among them J.S. Stevenson, an employee of the American Banknote Company (two designs) and Thomas F. Morris, Jr., son of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Bureau of Engraving and Printing
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is a government agency within the United States Department of the Treasury that designs and produces a variety of security products for the United States government, most notable of which is paper currency for the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve itself is...

's first chief of the engraving division (four designs).

Issued stamps

The issued stamps conform to the prize-winning design by Miss Rawlinson, with, as already noted, some modifications in bordering on higher denominations; these, however, are unobtrusive enough so that an impression of overall uniformity is preserved. Values from 1/2 cent through 50 cents were printed in sheets on a rotary press, while the two-colored 1, 2 and 5 dollar stamps required flat-plate printing. Beyond honoring the presidents, the series, in effect, cunningly encoded the historical position of each in a visual mnemonic: for the first 22 presidents appear on the single cent values in the order of their accession, with George Washington, the first president, on the 1¢, James Knox Polk, the eleventh president, on the 11¢ and Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...

, the twenty-second president, on the 22¢ stamp. Cleveland's two non-consecutive presidencies disrupt the series, as he stood as both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president. In strict order, a twenty-four cent stamp should have been excluded from the Prexies—but to eliminate this denomination, which had many postal applications, while including the useless twenty-three cent value would have been perverse. Thus the twenty-third president, Benjamin Harrison, appears on the 24¢ stamp, and president number twenty-five, William McKinley restores the alignment on the 25¢ denomination. The higher values thereafter part company with the numerical list of presidencies, beginning with Theodore Roosevelt (number twenty-six) on the 30¢ denomination. Of the 29 presidents in the series, 12 had never before appeared on a United States postage stamp; and the Prexies also presented four denominations not found on any previous U. S. stamps: 18¢, 19¢, 21¢ and 22¢. These and some other values had been included solely for the educational purpose of placing the presidents in proper numerical order: they did not correspond to any current postal rate. As aforesaid, the non-presidential images, Benjamin Franklin, Martha Washington and the White House were used on the 1/2¢, 1-1/2¢ and 4-1/2¢ respectively. Apparently, it was not originally planned to match the presidents with their numerical positions, for James Monroe
James Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...

 was initially announced as the subject of the 4-1/2¢ stamp.

Ironically, given the historical concept behind the series, the prexies departed from tradition in several significant ways. It was the first definitive series of postage stamps since 1870 in which George Washington did NOT appear on the normal letter rate, for numerical order placed Thomas Jefferson on the 3¢ value required for letters in 1938. Washington, instead, satisfied the post-card rate on the 1¢ stamp—and this, too, broke with tradition, which had almost invariably presented Franklin on that value. Franklin did, however, as on many previous definitive issues, begin the series, appearing on the 1/2-cent stamp, which, in effect, informally honored him as the "halfth" president.

It may be said that several aspects of the Prexies series—its concept as a painless public history lesson and its egalitarian treatment of all presidents irrespective of their differing achievements—are very much in accord with the New Deal ethos of the administration that issued it.

Coil stamps

On January 20, 1939, nine values were issued in coil
Coil stamp
A coil stamp is a type of postage stamp sold in strips one stamp wide. The name derives from the usual handling of long strips, which is to coil them into rolls, in a manner reminiscent of adhesive tape rolls...

 form, consisting of all low values from 1¢ to 6¢, and the 10¢, all perforated
Postage stamp separation
For postage stamps, separation is the means by which individual stamps are made easily detachable from each other.Methods of separation include:# perforation: cutting rows and columns of small holes...

 10 vertically. On January 27, the four values from 1¢ to 3¢ were also issued in vertical coil form, perforated 10 horizontally.

An Anomalous Watermark

A reprinting of the $1 Wilson denomination in 1950 or '51 resulted—by accident—in the first watermarked U. S. postage stamp issued since 1916. For this printing run, the technicians inadvertently used a batch of revenue-stamp paper rather than normal postage stamp paper, and, as a result, these Wilson sheets emerged covered with copies of the watermark "U S I R" in double-line letters. While examples of the watermarked $1 stamp are not inordinately rare, they still command some thirty times the price of normal unwatermarked copies. (U S I R watermarks had last accidenally appeared on U. S. postage stamps in 1895, when revenue paper had been used for some sheets of 6-cent and 8-cent stamps of the definitive issue then current.)

The presidential issues was long-lived among United States definitive postal series. It was only after sixteen years, in 1954, that the postal service began to supersede its denominations, gradually replacing them with stamps of the so-called Liberty series
Liberty Issue
The Liberty issue was a definitive series of postage stamps issued by the United States between 1954 and 1965. It offered twenty-four denominations, ranging from a half-cent issue showing Benjamin Franklin to a five dollar issue depicting Alexander Hamilton...

 over the next several years.

Collecting Prexies

One of the (difficult) games for Prexie collectors is to find a cover
Cover (philately)
In philately, the term cover pertains to the outside of an envelope or package with an address, typically with postage stamps that have been cancelled and is a term generally used among stamp and postal history collectors. The term does not include the contents of the letter or package, although...

 with, for instance, a single 16¢ stamp that pays a combination of rate and fees valid during the Prexies' period of usage. Many such covers remain to be discovered; some sellers on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

 have been surprised to discover a seemingly ordinary-looking cover bid up to several hundred dollars because it was one of the sought-after solo usages.

Dates of issue and Scott catalog number

  • Scott
    Scott catalogue
    The Scott catalogue of postage stamps, published by Scott Publishing Co, a subsidiary of Amos Press, is updated annually and lists all the stamps of the entire world which its editors recognize as issued for postal purposes. It is published in six large volumes and is also produced in...

     803 - The ½¢ Benjamin Franklin
    Benjamin Franklin
    Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

     - May 19
  • Scott 804 - The 1¢ George Washington
    George Washington
    George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

     - April 25
  • Scott 805 - The 1½¢ Martha Washington
    Martha Washington
    Martha Dandridge Custis Washington was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington is considered to be the first First Lady of the United States...

     - May 5
  • Scott 806 - The 2¢ John Adams
    John Adams
    John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

     - June 3 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 807 - The 3¢ Thomas Jefferson
    Thomas Jefferson
    Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

     - June 16
  • Scott 808 - The 4¢ James Madison
    James Madison
    James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...

     - July 1
  • Scott 809 - The 4½¢ White House
    White House
    The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

     - July 11
  • Scott 810 - The 5¢ James Monroe
    James Monroe
    James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...

     - July 21
  • Scott 811 - The 6¢ John Quincy Adams
    John Quincy Adams
    John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States . He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former...

     - July 28 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 812 - The 7¢ Andrew Jackson
    Andrew Jackson
    Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...

     - August 4

  • Scott 813 - The 8¢ Martin Van Buren
    Martin Van Buren
    Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....

     - August 11 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 814 - The 9¢ William Henry Harrison
    William Henry Harrison
    William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States , an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. He was 68 years, 23 days old when elected, the oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the...

     - August 18 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 815 - The 10¢ John Tyler
    John Tyler
    John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States . A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President . He was the first to succeed to the office of President following the death of a predecessor...

     - September 2 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 816 - The 11¢ James K. Polk
    James K. Polk
    James Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States . Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives and the 12th Governor of Tennessee...

     - September 8 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 817 - The 12¢ Zachary Taylor
    Zachary Taylor
    Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...

     - September 14
  • Scott 818 - The 13¢ Millard Fillmore
    Millard Fillmore
    Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the office of president...

     - September 22 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 819 - The 14¢ Franklin Pierce
    Franklin Pierce
    Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States and is the only President from New Hampshire. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army...

     - October 6 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 820 - The 15¢ James Buchanan
    James Buchanan
    James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....

     - October 13 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 821 - The 16¢ Abraham Lincoln
    Abraham Lincoln
    Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

     - October 20
  • Scott 822 - The 17¢ Andrew Johnson
    Andrew Johnson
    Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...

     - October 27 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 823 - The 18¢ Ulysses S. Grant
    Ulysses S. Grant
    Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...

     - November 3
  • Scott 824 - The 19¢ Rutherford B. Hayes
    Rutherford B. Hayes
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...

     - November 10
  • Scott 825 - The 20¢ James A. Garfield - November 10
  • Scott 826 - The 21¢ Chester A. Arthur
    Chester A. Arthur
    Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st President of the United States . Becoming President after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, Arthur struggled to overcome suspicions of his beginnings as a politician from the New York City Republican machine, succeeding at that task by embracing...

     - November 22 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)
  • Scott 827 - The 22¢ Grover Cleveland
    Grover Cleveland
    Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...

     - November 22
  • Scott 828 - The 24¢ Benjamin Harrison
    Benjamin Harrison
    Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States . Harrison, a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio, and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana at age 21, eventually becoming a prominent politician there...

     - December 2
  • Scott 829 - The 25¢ William McKinley
    William McKinley
    William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...

     - December 2
  • Scott 830 - The 30¢ Theodore Roosevelt
    Theodore Roosevelt
    Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

     - December 8
  • Scott 831 - The 50¢ William Howard Taft
    William Howard Taft
    William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...

     - December 8
  • Scott 832 - The $1 Woodrow Wilson
    Woodrow Wilson
    Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

     - August 29
  • Scott 833 - The $2 Warren G. Harding
    Warren G. Harding
    Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th President of the United States . A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate , as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator...

     - September 29
  • Scott 834 - The $5 Calvin Coolidge
    Calvin Coolidge
    John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...

     - November 17 (first appearance on a U. S. stamp)

See also

  • 1932 Washington Bicentennial
    1932 Washington Bicentennial
    The 1932 Washington Bicentennial are postage stamps issued by the United States government in 1932 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of President George Washington's birth...

  • US Presidents on US postage stamps
  • Washington-Franklin Issues
    Washington-Franklin Issues
    The Washington - Franklin Issues are a series of definitive U.S. Postage stamps depicting George Washington and Benjamin Franklin produced by the U.S. Post Office between 1908 and 1922...

  • AMERIPIX Presidential issue of 1986

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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