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What else can I collect?
How about Christmas Seals?
Christmas Seals are adhesive labels placed on envelopes during the Christmas season to raise funds and awareness for tuberculosis programs. You can collect US or foreign or both.
Some History:
It started in Denmark. In 1904, Einar
Holbøll, a Danish postal clerk developed the idea of a seal on envelopes
during Christmas to raise money for tuberculosis. Over 4 million were sold
in the first year.
The very first Christmas Seal issued in 1904 in Denmark.
Einar Holbøll died in 1927
They were introduced to the United States by Emily Bissell in 1907.
Emily P. Bissell (May 31, 1861 – 1948) was an American social worker and activist, best remembered for introducing Christmas Seals to the United States.
Born in Wilmington, Delaware, she made a name for herself at a young age as the founder of that city's first public kindergarten and for her efforts to introduce child labor laws in that state. In 1883, she founded an organization, now known as the West End Neighborhood House, that originally provided social services to Wilmington's immigrant Irish and German families. Nevertheless, she avoided politics and was closely identified with the anti-suffragist movement. In 1900, she testified before the United States Senate Committee on Woman's Suffrage, arguing that women had no place in politics.
Several years later, in 1907, she was drawn to the cause of helping people with tuberculosis (TB). She had already heard of an idea in Denmark in which people attached a special stamp to their mail, the proceeds of which would go to fight the disease, and decided to introduce the same idea in Delaware. Her goal was to raise $300 for a local sanitarium, using a bright red stamp she designed herself, and convinced local post offices to sell them for just 1 cent. This way, she believed, even the poorest people could help in the fight against TB.
Though the idea failed at first, Bissell was able to gain enough publicity from a Philadelphia newspaper to make $3,000, ten times the amount she originally hoped to get. People were intrigued by the idea of Christmas Seals, and the following year, Howard Pyle, a notable illustrator from Wilmington, donated the design of the second stamp.
Bissell spent the remainder of her life promoting Christmas stamps and helping to eliminate tuberculosis. She died in 1948. A public hospital outside Wilmington bears her name.
In 1980, on the 119th anniversary of her birth, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 15 cent stamp in her honor.
It grew to a national program in 1908 by the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (NASPT) and the American National Red Cross. It is not a postage stamp,but many are placed on envelopes as they were sold at post offices. Scott Catalog lists them starting in 1907.
Emily designed the first one sold in the US. Scott WX1 type 1 & WX2 type2
Type 1
Type 2
Type 1 (Merry Christmas), Type 2 (Merry Christmas and happy new year). Both are the same size.
You can collect them as singes or better yet on covers.
It has to be "tied" to the cover. (the postmark is on part of the seal.) These can be hard to find.
This is Scott WX3 and it has 10 varieties. So they can be a challenge.
1911 Imprent Block
1908-2 sPane Specimen Panel
Collect them in sheets. Hard or next to impossible to find in the older ones.
More Information
Christmas Seal & Charity Stamp Society Home Page.
A non-profit organization established by seal collectors in 1931 and an American Philatelic Society affiliate #101.
All kinds of Christmas seal literature including catalogues on Foreign seals can be found here.
Credit given to fsimpson@bellsouth.net for most of the above images, You can also contect him if you have any questions regarding Christmas seals.
What else can I collect?