Monday Morning Brief | Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers

Watch as Linn’s Stamp News senior editor Denise McCarty discusses Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz and how her quest to find a stamp showing one of them ended when the Isle of Man issued its Christmas stamps on Oct. 20.

Full video transcript:

Welcome to the Monday Morning Brief for October 31, 2016.

The ruby slippers from the 1939 classic movie The Wizard of Oz were in the news a couple of weeks ago because the pair of shoes on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., were fading and money was needed to conserve them.

A public #KeepThemRuby! Kickstarter fundraising campaign was launched, and fortunately, the $300,000 goal was reached in just a few days.

And, at about the same time, I found the ruby slipper I had been hunting for  ? that is one that is pictured on a postage stamp.

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My hunt for a philatelic version of Dorothy’s red shoes began last year when I was writing a topical article about shoes on stamps.

I found a variety of other red shoes, but none that belonged to the fictional Dorothy Gale. I couldn’t even find the original silver slippers that L. Frank Baum wrote about in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book which the movie was based on.

The United States Postal Service honored the movie in its 1990 Classic Films set of four. And, while that stamp showed Judy Garland as Dorothy, the yellow brick road, the Emerald City, and yes, Toto, too, there were no slippers.

The Postal Service honored Judy Garland again on a Legends of Hollywood stamp issued in 2006. This time, a scene from The Wizard of Oz is shown in the selvage, but again no sparkling shoes can be seen.

Montserrat came close with a souvenir sheet that was part of its 1989 stamp issue marking the 50th anniversary of the making of the film. If you look very closely, you can see one of Dorothy’s shoes in the large illustration in the center of the sheet, but the shoes are not shown on the stamp itself.

Finally, this year on Oct. 20, the Isle of Man issued stamps featuring one of Dorothy’s ruby red slippers. The stamps, one which has traditional gum and the other which is a self-adhesive, are part of the island’s Christmas set showing iconic items from holiday stage productions called pantomimes.

In addition to the ruby slipper, there is Captain Cook’s hook from Peter Pan, the lamp from Aladdin, the poisoned apple from Snow White, the knapsack from Dick Whittington, and the feathered hat from Robin Hood on these stamps from the Isle of Man.

I hope that this week you can find the postage stamp that have been searching for, too.

For Linn’s Stamp News and Scott catalogs, I’m Denise McCarty. You can keep up on the latest stamp news by following Linn's Stamp News on Linns.com on Facebook and Twitter.