Comments about the proposed first sale

The Museum posted the Request for Proposals on their website on June 18. This is the beginning of their process to sell some of the excess stamps and destroy many of them. After reading through it, I doubt that many stamp dealers will be willing to jump through the hoops the Smithsonian requires in order to sell the stamps.

Of the 132 different stamps they propose to sell, in a total quantity of about 35,000 stamps, 49 are not known to exist outside the National Postal Museum. They still plan to destroy about 1.4 million stamps, many of which not known in collectors hands.

One of the real tragedies in this planned destruction is that it includes more than 34,000 (in thirteen different varieties) of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 stamps. This is one of the most fascinating, but unknown, tax acts ever passed by the U.S. Congress. It had a lot of social implications. The use of these stamps was tightly controlled; I know of six that have survived in collections. The museum plans to sell 3,594 examples and destroy more than 34,000 additional examples. Why?

Those of you who subscribe to Linn's Stamp News saw my advertisement in the June 28 issue in which I offered to pay One Million Dollars for the 1.4 million stamps the museum plans to destroy. Of course the museum turned the offer down. I guess a pile of ashes serves their purposes more than a million bucks. Figure that one out.

Destruction of stamps by a museum sends the message that stamps are worthless and have no value. If the museum does destroy the stamps, it will be a public relations disaster for all of philately.

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