USPS limiting press sheet purchases to five per item

By Michael Baadke

The United States Postal Service will continue to offer press sheets, both without die cuts and with die cuts, for multiple forever commemorative stamps that will be issued in the coming weeks.

An ordering limit of five per item has been imposed by the Postal Service, and the press sheets are not available for presale.

In response to an inquiry from Linn’s Stamp News, USPS spokesman Roy Betts said, “We are continually monitoring press sheet sales and inventory and make every attempt to produce quantities adequate for customer need. Limitations were put in place in an attempt to give purchasing opportunities to as many customers as possible, but press sheets have always been printed in limited quantities.”

The recently distributed Quarter 2 edition of USA Philatelic, the USPS retail stamp and stamp products catalog, reveals that both press sheet varieties will be made available for the Star Wars Droids stamps (issue date May 4), the Heritage Breeds stamps (May 17), the Go For Broke: Japanese American Soldiers of WWII stamp (June 3), the Emilio Sanchez set of four (June 10), the Sun Science set of 10 (June 18), and the Yogi Berra stamp (June 24).

Item numbers and the press sheet prices have been added to Linn’s 2021 U.S. Stamp Program, in this issue on page 26.

The Postal Service resumed issuing press sheets without the die cuts that normally separate individual stamps for selected commemorative issues earlier this year.

However, the no-die-cut press sheets issued in 2021 sold out very quickly, before many collectors could obtain an example for their collections.

Four issues were in the first group of no-die-cut issues that sold out: Love (Jan. 14), August Wilson (Jan. 28), Year of the Ox (Feb. 2) and Chien Shiung-Wu (Feb. 11).

The sudden sellout of these varieties was reported in the March 8 Linn’s on page 8.

Modern USPS press sheets, which offer four, six or more full panes of stamps on a single unsevered large sheet, were first issued in 1994. Press sheets without die cuts appeared in 2012, sold along with the die-cut sheets, until sales of the no-die-cut varieties were abruptly discontinued in early 2016.

The Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers adds notes to the listings of stamps that were available in one or both press sheet varieties.

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