A 1991 U.S. stamp featuring Pluto is headed to the dwarf planet on board NASA's New Horizons robotic probe, which will soon render the phrase featured on the stamp, "Pluto: Not Yet Explored," outdated,

In 2008, Great Britain’s Royal Mail introduced a new postal product — a self-service, machine-vended label that customers could purchase and use to mail a letter.

The United States Postal Service is unable to document cost savings from its decision to print postage stamps on paper that cannot be soaked off envelopes. That’s the conclusion of the agency’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request Linn’s filed with the agency May 11 at the suggestion of a former senior postal official.

In a July 3 story that broke the very day they were issued, one of five new stamps celebrating UNESCO World Heritage Sites was found to have the wrong image. Canada Post will answer critics by withdrawing and shredding the stamps, and issuing a new stamp with an accurate image.

Satchel Paige, one of the most highly regarded pitchers in all of baseball, played the game professionally for four decades and was named to Baseball’s National Hall of Fame in 1971. He was honored on a 33¢ stamp in 2000.

Much of the talk in the stamp-collecting hobby last week surrounded the new Elvis Presley stamp due out in August.

The new stamp honoring musician and entertainer Elvis Presley — known worldwide as the King of Rock 'n' Roll — will feature a photograph dating from 1954 or 1955, when Presley was 19 or 20 years old.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, Bill Haley was among the key music pioneers featured on stamps in the 1993 American Music series.

Although still 10-months away, the buzz surrounding World Stamp Show 2016 to be held next May in New York City is beginning to feel palpable.

Union Naval officer David G. Farragut has been honored on three United States stamps, but his heroic actions during the Civil War also feature in the subject matter of other U.S. stamps.

The 30th American president, Calvin Coolidge, first assumed the office after the unexpected death of his predecessor, Warren G. Harding. He was later voted in for a four-year term that began in 1925.

Regency Superior held a sale June 3-7 in conjunction with the Napex stamp show in McLean, Va. The sale included space memorabilia and autographs, as well as stamps and postal history. In common with other such sales, however, there were some crossover items that covered multiple categories.

A man with a flair for popular, patriotic tunes, George M. Cohan (1878-1942) was a top composer and entertainer in the early years of the 20th century.

Harmers International held a sale of worldwide stamps and postal history at the Collectors Club in New York on June 6, including a numerous array of philatelic forgeries. The sale was previewed on the front page of the June 8 Linn’s. The top lot was a cover from Romania franked with an 1858 54-parale stamp showing the classic bull’s head Coat of Arms design.

Also this week, an Ingrid Bergman stamp was announced and the United Stamps Stamp Society was saluted.

Several readers have asked: In what situation should a stamp or cover be expertized? I could write several long and wordy columns on this subject, but a more meaningful way to approach it may be to show some examples over the next several columns, and say a bit about why these items need to be expertized.

The first newspaper in Austria was published in 1605, and for many years newspaper publishers paid postal fees, in cash, to mail copies of their publications. Writing in The Collectors Club Philatelist of January 1951, Edwin Mueller suggested that the first postage stamp of the Austrian monarchy, issued in 1850, prompted the idea of a similar adhesive stamp to prepay newspaper postal fees.

The Netherlands’ PostNL issued a single stamp June 22 marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The nondenominated international-rate stamp shows a portrait of the Prince of Orange, later King William II.

he China market is definitely weaker than it has been in recent years. Many People’s Republic of China sets that used to sell for nearly 100 percent of Scott catalog value are now selling for around 50 percent of catalog value. A speculative bubble in the China stock market has been draining Chinese investors away from stamps. This stock market seems to have overcome some of the mistrust once held by many Chinese investors, and is drawing a lot of investor money away from stamps and coins.

Sometimes colors can fade on stamps to the point that they look like color-omitted errors. An online auction of an apparent color-omitted error illustrates this important point. A buyer’s winning bid approached $100 for a faded stamp offered as a “color omitted error” on the online auction site eBay in September 2014. The so-called error is a mint single of the $5 stamp in the Americana series, issued in 1979 (Scott 1612).