Golden Eagle Pass souvenir sheet tough to find: Stamp Market Tips

By Henry Gitner and Rick Miller

On Dec. 10, 1987, the National Park Service issued a $25 Golden Eagle Pass souvenir sheet of seven (Scott RVP1). The top right stamp is inscribed“Golden Eagle Pass” alongside an eagle in flight. The designs of the other stamps are from paintings produced for the Arts for the Parks program.

The program was a competition among 100 artists to create paintings showing the beauty and wonders of the properties administered by the National Park System. The $100,000 prize went to Richard Schmid of Evanston, Ill. His painting, Mountain Stream, depicting a scene from the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is seen on the stamp at bottom left in the souvenir sheet.

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Scenes painted by other artists depicting Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, and Glacier National Park in Montana were used for the designs of the other five stamps.

In use, only the two right stamps were required to be affixed to the license. The license was good for entry to all national parks from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 1988. Quoting the 2016 Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers, “Problems with the issue format caused the stamp program to be terminated after 1988.”

The entire mint souvenir sheet is the format most frequently sold by dealers and collected. The Scott U.S. Specialized catalog values the mint souvenir sheet at $65. This can be a difficult item to find. We think it is a good buy in the $50-to-$65 price range.