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Honest, Abe!

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries. 

It was Abraham Lincoln's birthday recently, but the exact date has been swallowed up by 
Presidents Day.

And it's pretty hard to find him on a U-S stamp. It's been a dozen years since the last 
one, and that was only part of a Civil War set.

He used to be a fixture among U-S stamps. Starting just a year after his assassination, 
you could usually find him in a post office drawer.

From the late Nineteen Fifties to the early Sixties, the magenta four-cent Lincoln was a 
mail mainstay, since it paid for first-class service. Shortly after the letter rate went 
up to a nickel, the magenta Lincoln was replaced by a black Lincoln stamp, also a 
four-center, and a postcard. And there was a five-cent stamped envelope for Lincoln that 
got a lot of use after the rate change.

More recently, there was another stamped envelope eight years ago, but these don't seem 
to get as much use now.

But fear not: Two thousand Nine is the bicentennial of his birth. We should be getting 
plenty of Abe Lincoln stamps.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more about stamps and stamp collecting, 
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com

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