Who Will Be First?

The United States Post Office announced last year that it was ending the previous policy that has guided postal emissions for the last century and that people no longer had to be ten years dead before they could be suitable for commemoration on US postage stamps (previously, the only exception to this policy was recently deceased Presidents). Our post office was the only one in the world that had maintained such a policy. It originated as a desire to depoliticized the stamp issuing process and ensure that postal commemoration was only for people who had stood the test of time. The system worked, perhaps too well. In our world where fame is so fleeting and attention spans so short the philatelic sales agency had trouble marketing stamps commemorating people that many people couldn’t remember. Hence the change. The question that has interested philatelists is who will be first. Showing the age of most people who collect stamps, recent discussions in the philatelic press have centered around John Glenn and the Mercury Project or Neil Armstrong and the moon landing. But the reason for this change in postal policy is to allow stamps that would appeal to young people and less  world-aware people and this would mean issues concentrated in the field of entertainment and sports. I was surprised that Liz Taylor wasn’t the first last year when she died and would put Whitney Houston on the short list if her life hadn’t been so troubled by drugs. This should be the year where the first stamp under the new policy will be issued. It will be interesting to see who it is.