99% Invisible - 556- You Ain’t Nothin But a Postmark

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Over a decade after Elvis Presley’s death, the king of rock & roll took over headlines once again as Americans weighed in on which portrait of Elvis would be forever immortalized on a 29 cent US postage stamp. It was put to a popular vote: should the stamp feature an image of young Elvis at the start of his rise, or an older Elvis in his iconic white jumpsuit.The resulting Elvis stamp eventually outsold every single commemorative stamp before and since.You Ain’t Nothin But a Postmark

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In 1992, a historic election captivated the nation. The race pitted a young, up-and-comer against an old guard establishment candidate. And I am not talking about the 1992 presidential election between Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and the incumbent George H. W. Bush. Instead, this was the highly publicized race between young Elvis and old Elvis. Best reporter Gabe Bullard. Over a decade after Elvis Presley's death, the King of Rock and Roll took overhead lines

once again, as Americans weighed in on which portrait of Elvis would be forever immortalized on a 29-cent U.S. postage stamp. It was put to a popular vote. Should the stamp feature an image of young Elvis at the start of his rise or an older Elvis in his iconic white jumpsuit? The Elvis stamp boat grabbed the nation's attention playing out not just in newspapers and on late night TV,

but in the actual 1992 presidential election. And by the time the final vote was cast and every ballot had been counted, US Post-it stamps have been changed forever. When you mail a letter, you have a lot of options for stamps. You can go the traditional route and use an American flag, or you can choose a stamp that fits your personality. The Postal Service has issued stamps for Selena, the Star Wars droids, the Simpsons,

and so many other pop culture icons. But this kind of hundred-flavor variety in stamps is pretty new. In fact, it wasn't until the mid-19th century that we had posted stamps at all. In the early years of the Post Office, mail was often sent cash on delivery, like a collect call. If someone sent you a letter, you paid for it when you picked it up at the post office. The postage was expensive, and the system for calculating fees was complicated. It was hard to know what a letter would end up costing in the end.

When the US implemented standardized postage rates, the cost to mail letters became more predictable and less expensive. Now, a person could pay to send a letter in advance, and the recipient could get it without a fee. A stamp was proof that a sender had paid for the mail. The US issued its first national stamps in 1847, one with George Washington and one with the first US Postmaster, Benjamin Franklin. In the decades that followed, the US issued more and more varieties of stamps.

Stamps marked anniversaries, celebrated big events, and honored historical figures. Presidents, military heroes, and national wonders, and technological achievements, and flight milestones. That's Daniel Piazza, curator of the philotelic collections at this Misonia National Postal Museum. For much of their history, stamp designs were traditional, institutional, and patriotic.

Because no matter what's on a stamp, it's still an official document issued by the United States government. Like paper currency or like a bond or something like that, it's meant to represent the country. And so putting someone on a stamp is essentially a government endorsement, and a lot of subjects didn't make the cut.

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, America's biggest cultural contributions, like jazz, rock and roll, Hollywood, were mostly absent from envelopes. Part of it had to do, I think, with the fact that stamps in this period, most of them are designed and printed at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which also prints the money, and of course our money is very conservative as well. So there was a lot of hesitancy about getting into these frivolous topics. But there was also an incentive for the post office to design stamps that were new and novel. Because, along with the first stamps, came the first stamp collectors,

and they presented a unique value to the Postal Service. Postage stamps that are sold to collectors are pure profit for the Postal Service because they never have to deliver the service. Postage stamps are an IOU. Because of the way stamps work, as payment for a service not yet delivered, every stamp in a collector's album and not on an envelope represents money the post office gets to hold on to. A new stamp has the potential to make money, keep collectors happy, or even encourage new hobbyists to start a collection.

And the Postal Service wants this. Since the 1950s, the Post Office has had Philatalysts, stamp collectors, sit on a committee that weighs in on stamp design. I think the needs and the desires of collectors figure fairly prominently in that, just because it's a, you know, as in any other business enterprise, that's a niche market, that's your base. And the need for the Post Office to make money wherever it can has only intensified over time. In 1970, Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to operate as a self-funded agency.

That means that all its funding, even today, comes from the sale of postage products. A hit stamp can be a big deal financially for the post office. But the USPS also has a fine line to walk, keep the stamps traditional enough to be fit a government document, and also keep the crowds of collectors happy with new stamps that generate money. To further protect the dignity of government-issued stamps,

the post office also had a rule that anyone except presidents who's likeness appeared on a stamp needed to have been dead for at least 10 years. The idea was to give enough time for any unsavory details to emerge. The 10-year rule meant that a lot of celebrities weren't eligible for stamps at the peak of their influence, but it also meant that with each passing year, a new crop of honorees became eligible. Which is exactly what happened in the mid-19 1980s, when a group of dedicated fans started floating the idea of a stamp fit for a king.

I guess we would have been called stalkers, you know, but that word wasn't around then. This is Joan Gansky. She's been a fan of Elvis Presley since she first heard his music as a kid in England in the 50s. She even met Elvis a few times, hanging out outside of his house in LA after work. But most always, if you saw there were fans around, he would stop and talk to them. He never really forgot his fans. And his fans never forgot him.

Elvis died in 1977, and not long after after fans began agitating for a stamp. Joan and her husband Paul joined a letter writing campaign and recruited fellow members of their fan club, the jailhouse rockers, to help. They even made envelopes that said, I'm in favor of the Elvis stamp. We'd have meetings every month and we'd write letters and a big pitch was, look, you issue an Elvis stamp, you're going to make a lot of people happy, you're going to make a huge profit. And finally, the penny dropped with Anthony Frank. Anthony Frank took office as Postmaster General in 1988, the year after

Elvis became legally eligible to appear on a stamp. Almost immediately, he acknowledged the campaign for the Elvis stamp and even encouraged the idea. Frank's endorsement energized fans, but it also challenged the longstanding cautiousness the post office had around stamps. Until this point, the USPS had tread carefully, putting out commemorative stamps interesting enough to attract some new collectors while still sticking with their traditionally conservative look. If the USPS did put Elvis on a stamp, it would represent a fundamental change in what stamps

look like and who was allowed to be on them. Because Elvis Presley wasn't a war hero or a respected composer, he was a rock star, with a rock star lifestyle. A lot of the concerns around the Elvis stamp did center on his drug use, which was well known and well publicized and contributed to his death. That's Daniel Piazza again at the Postal Museum. After the Postmaster General said he would support an Elvis stamp, newspaper columns appeared with headlines like, return to sender. They argued that an Elvis stamp would be a government endorsement of drug use.

This is the middle of Nancy Reagan's just say no campaigns. The thrill can kill. Say no to drugs and say yes to life. After school specials about latch key kids and getting into drugs and all this sort of thing. And it wasn't just fans of Nancy Reagan who had reservations about putting Elvis on a stand. Public Enemy Song Fight the Power came out in 1989, and it calls out Elvis for co-opting the work of black artists. Later in that same verse, Chuck D. also says this.

But despite resistance from newspaper columnists, anti-drug activists, and public enemy, Postmaster Frank didn't back down. In the early 90s, the Post Office began recruiting artists to illustrate a series of stamps that would feature famous musicians. As the art director told me, he said, we're kind of done with the whole poets and philosophers and presidents. He said, we're trying to go in a different direction. Mark Stutzman is an illustrator based in Western Maryland. He's designed movie posters drawn from ad magazine. And if you drank soda out of a Batman Returns Cup from McDonald's in the 90s, that was him. In the early part of the decade, he was one of a handful of artists tapped to submit work for the new series of stamps. And our director gave Stutsman a long list of candidates for stamps, including Elvis.

But they were toying with him not being on the list. Even at that point, they were really afraid of treading in this area for fear that they would alienate tried and true collectors. In fact, at first, the art director asked Stutsman to work on a stamp honoring Count Basie. But then a few days later, the director called back. They said, put down what you're doing, and I want you to submit your best Elvis Presley. And so after he got the assignment,

Stutsman said about trying to capture the King's likeness in miniature form. Even though Posture Stamps are basically receipts for spending a few cents with the government, they're also works of art. That's part of what makes them so appealing to collectors. And like any work of art, they can tell a story. They just have to do it on a very tiny canvas. Stutzman was limited to five by seven inches,

and because it would be shrunk down further after that, his art director told him to keep it simple. The format is terribly small and he said it can't be complicated, and my work has a tendency to be somewhat detailed, and all of that stuff. He says, don't make it, and he used the term fussy. He said, you can't get fussy, it has to be very direct. Still, Stutzman wanted to capture as much about Elvis' life and appeal as possible. So I had to rush to the library.

This is before the internet. Rush to the library, go to magazine stands, get Elvis Presley fan magazines, and just start compiling as much stuff as I could to kind of see what direction I would go in. He read about how Elvis performed, where he got his clothes tailored, the color schemes of the era. Stussman drew young Elvis Presley in a gold jacket with a dark-fluck pattern in front of a pink background. His neck tie is loose, he holds a microphone in his hand, and he's leaning forward. I wanted Elvis' sex appeal to come through, because I think that was a big part of why he was so controversial and successful. And then I had the little tassel of hair that was loose that showed that he

was active on stage. And he's a little perspirey, but that's like two subtle for stamp worlds. Stutzman only handed in this one design. Other artists submitted multiple versions to the point that the Postal Service ended up with a total of 60 Elvis portraits to choose from. And I submitted one because I was young and dumb and didn't know that I could do more than one version. Of these 60 options, the Postal Service narrowed their choices down to Stutzman's and one other. The two finalists represented two very different periods of Elvis' life and

two very different versions of an American icon. When is the meaning of the young Elvis? Well, first just eye candy. Let's be real. Come on, young Elvis was super cute. And Powers is a critic and correspondent for NPR music. Stutzman's Elvis Portrait is of a poor kid from Mississippi on his way to becoming the biggest star in the world, powered by rock and roll. And of course, his famously scandalous dance moves. Young Elvis is, you know, youthful virility and spirit.

But also, young Elvis is irreverence. Young Elvis is, you know, wearing pink. And I think that's one of the great appeals of that image of Elvis and his youth is is that he is a soft boy that we can all love. Young soft boy Elvis was a far cry from the second Elvis portrait made by an artist named John Burkey. Burkey's design shows Elvis in his later years. He has sideburns growing past the high collar of his white leather jumpsuit. This quote unquote old Elvis is not quite facing the viewer. He's almost in profile. Berkey was reportedly inspired by an image of Elvis from his 1973 concert in Hawaii, though this portrait is widely associated with his Las Vegas residency. Berkey's old Elvis was closer to the one that critics made fun of. This was the Elvis who

people joked about faking his death and hiding out in a trailer park. The Elvis who was immortalized in velvet paintings. Don't Gansky again. The Naseas they would bring out well you know that he was you know a on drugs he was fat and all these you know ridicule him for the jumpsuits that he wore. But even though Old Elvis was an easy target for jokes and was past his prime hitmaking years, Berkey's image was far more familiar in the 1990s. It's the image so many Elvis impersonators tried to copy. Even a decade after his death, this Elvis, with the sequins in the hair, seemed to be everywhere.

In the early 90s, you didn't see many young Elvis. After his death, this Elvis, with the sequins in the hair, seemed to be everywhere. In the early 90s, you didn't see many young Elvis. In the general public's eyes, if you said, you know, you're going to see Elvis perform, they'd expect to jump suit. To fans, the Las Vegas residency, the tours, it all showed stamina and devotion to the people who loved him. The press might have dubbed this design Old Elvis, but he was only 42 when he died. And there was something poignant to the image of him in his last years, a flawed hero.

You know, it plays into this idea that wealth will not make you happy, that fame will not make you happy, which is always important to articulate as a kind of a safety valve for America's relentless craving for fame. You know, it humanizes the icon. The Postal Service unveiled Stutzman and Berkes designs in February of 1992. The young Elvis, full of promise and the old Elvis in all of his rhinestone glory.

The Postal Service was already taking a risk issuing an Elvis stamp to begin with. To choose one image over another would be even more controversy to take on. Rather than make a decision, they decided to make a splash. The first rock and roll stamp would be a populous choice. By a mail-in ballot available at Post Office in April, the public will decide whether a younger leaner Elvis or an older plumber Elvis is the one that goes into circulation. Piazza says the choice not only let the Postal Service off the hook for deciding which

Elvis to enshrine. It also generated publicity for the shift toward pop culture stamps. It has this sort of build up leading up to the issue and the public feels involved in the stamp issue. You know, maybe part of the consideration too is that helps to blunt some of the criticism because it's obviously wildly popular. As hard as it might be to imagine, a federally sponsored mail-in poll about post-it stamps took off in a huge way, and not just among philatilists. Postcard ballots went out in People magazine, and were available to pick up at local

post offices. People lined up to get them, some took stacks of ballots as keepsakes, or to try to sway the election. Just because this was a government vote didn't mean the usual rules applied. I voted at least a hundred times, and I suspect I'm not the only one. That's Paul Gansky again with some casual voter fraud. I think we all voted multiple times like on American Island, you know. There are a few reasons the Elvis vote became such an unlikely phenomenon. First this is when baby boomers were rising in political power and influence. Boomers were more steeped in pop culture than previous generations and they took it more seriously. Earlier generations might have seen pop culture as frivolous, but for Boomers,

it was generation-defining, a side-effect of growing up at a time with more mass media than ever. As the vote unfolded, people wrote letters to their local newspapers commenting on the stamp. Reporters interviewed impersonators, fans, detractors. The phrase all shook up was everywhere. It was anyone's guess which version of the King of Rock and Roll would win out. But one presidential candidate of that year made no mystery about where he was placing his chips.

Bill Clinton of Arkansas has been nicknamed Elvis by reporters, a man who would be president as a fan of the king and he was persuading. Clinton was in his 40s, old for an Elvis, but young for a presidential candidate. And like other baby boomers, he engaged with pop culture in a new way. He went on MTV, he used Fleetwood Mac for his campaign song, and he loved Elvis. Clinton welcomed the comparisons. The press called his plane, air Elvis, and he sang Elvis on the campaign trail.

No, I can't be found. That's all I can do. Sit home all alone. If you can't come around, at least please telephone my message to the New York press. Don't be cruel. But I'm too horny. And on top of that, Clinton referenced Elvis during one of the most iconic campaign appearances in political history. The Arseneo Hall Show opens and bears Bill Clinton, wearing sunglasses and playing saxophone with the show's band. This was in June of 92, the day after Clinton secured the Democratic nomination, and just as Arsenio walks on stage waving, Clinton starts playing a solo.

The song he's playing is, of course, Heartbreak Hotel hotel by Elvis Presley. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ Arseniel Hall asked Clinton was about the Alpha Stamp. Let's get right down to things. What do you like? The Old Elvis or the... Wood Stamp. You know, I know you're an Elvis fan. I led a national crusade for the young Elvis. Really?

Yeah. You know, and you get old, you... I mean, he got fat like me. I mean, you know, I... I think it has to be the young elephant. That's when he had all his energy and real raw, new fresh power. I mean, you know, it would be ashamed to do the old thing. The public didn't need to wait long to find out if Bill Clinton's prediction would bear out.

Because the next day in Memphis, they announced the results. 1.2 million ballots were cast for the OVIS stamp, and at the podium in front of network cameras, Anthony Frank made the announcement. The winner is... It is... The young Elvis. Young Elvis won by a landslide, taking 75% of the vote. Speaking to reporters the day of the unveiling, Postmaster Frank used this attention to say

the stamp was the start of a change for the post office. We're not elitist anymore and we're not only doing symphonies and we're not only doing dead poets, but we're doing people that contributed to the culture of our country, the pop culture of you will. The Elvis Stamp went on sale just a couple weeks before Clinton's inauguration on what would have been Elvis' 58th birthday. The Ganskies were in line, along with thousands of other fans. I know I bought at least 50 sheets.

I seem to recolorating a check for $700. That's a lot of money back then. I seem to recolorating a check for $700. That's a lot of money back then. Stamps were 29 cents. And the post office went on to sell over a half a billion Elvis stamps. It outsold every single commemorative stamp before and since. And with many of those stamps heading towards collectors albums, that was a lot of profits for the Postal Service. A few people didn't like the idea of Elvis being on his stamp, but what the hell?

It worked out good. On top of the stamp sales, the post office also made money, licensing Stutzman's young Elvis image. There were mugs and key chains and I don't know, belt buckles and tote bags and probably baseball caps and who knows what else. Soon, the post office launched the Legends of American Music series, with stamps for Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Dina Washington, and of course Elvis. The series went on to include over 70 artists and opened the doors to a whole new wave of black musicians on US stamps. Since the Elvis Stamp came out, a lot of concerns about

propriety have gone out the window. Famously, anti-drug artists like Jimmy Hendrix and Janice Joplin got stamps with little to no blowback. So have movie stars, athletes, and even cartoon characters. Stamps were never the same again. This absolutely opened the door to the pop culture stamps of the 20th century. For good or ill, I mean, whether you like that or not.

America might not have been ready in 1992, but today, I think it's safe to say that an old Elvis stamp would be an easy sell for the post office. Jump suit and all. C.C.C.L. for the post office. Jump suit and all. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Coming up the strange world of international Elvis stamps.

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ So we're back with Gabe Bollard and Gabe, we were talking about the Elvis stamp, but I should specify it, we're talking about the US Elvis stamp because the one you reported on is not the only Elvis stamp out there. It isn't the only one, and it's not even the first.

Other countries without the same dead for so many years rule as the US issued their own Elva stamps years earlier. And so how many are there? So there are dozens out there issued over decades. The earliest I can find was issued in Grenada one year after Elva's died in August 1978. But there have also been Elva stamps in Tanzania, West Germany, Central African Republic, and many other countries.

And I'm guessing these various Elvis stamps from like Grenada are big among collectors. Yeah, to say the least. Jason Cardavni, he's a historian and a stamp collector who specializes in music stamps. He showed me his collection. I have a whole album of postage stamps of Elvis from all over the world, and it's just it's incredible. I mean, Albania, Antigua, Chad, Burkina Faso, I mean, just all of these countries featuring Elvis, and you know that they're doing it for monetary reasons.

It's kind of funny and interesting. And so what do these stamps look like? I mean, did they all decide to do the young Elvis like we did? No, no, not at all. They run the gamut of Elvis's career and meaning. There are young, old, there's tributes to different movies he was in, there's tributes to events in his life.

There's a postage stamp of Elvis that actually celebrates his service in the military. So it's an image of him holding a gun, actually the stamp itself, and then him in a young uniform there, just sort of in a collector souvenir sheet around it. That's from Liberia. So yeah, so there's some interesting, kind of graphic treatments of Elvis in these global stamps. So is this a widespread thing to have US celebrities on international stamps?

Or is this just like the magic of Elvis? Is this just an Elvis thing? So Elvis changed the game for stamps like this, but he's not the only American celebrity you'll see. To go back a bit, Jason says Lewis Armstrong was on other country stamps long before Elvis. Within a few months of his death in 1971, Molly, Senegal, and a few other countries put

out stamps with Armstrong on him. I think part of that was the sensation that he was, and jazz was so big in Africa. Part of it was the sort of growth of the black power movement and looking at black diaspora writ large and sort of champion champion these figures across international boundaries. So some of these countries are putting US figures on their stamps because they have some sort of ideological connection. Like it's essentially an honor. But as Jason kind of mentioned, you got to imagine that this is also a ploy to make money, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

One reason to put out stamps with US figures is because the stamps will sell to US collectors. And the US Elvis stamp made it clear just how much money a pop culture stamp can make. Jason says there's this wave of foreign stamps for US pop culture after the young Elvis stamp in the US was such a hit. And so can you tell me a little bit about what these international stamps typically look like? Are they, are there any sort of like different or interesting aesthetic choices that they make versus US stamps? Oh yeah, there's a wide variety of designs.

If you go on to stamp buying websites, you'll see a lot of what they call souvenir sheets with a few different faces on them. Typically when you think of a sheet of stamps, you might think of a tight grid without much space that isn't dedicated to postage. That's how you buy them at the post office here. But souvenir sheets are pages, sometimes they're postcard size, sometimes they're larger, that are meant for collectors. They only have a few stamps on them, but with an illustration around them that expands on the design. So if a stamp is someone's face,

the souvenir sheet might show the rest of their body. And relevant to our story about Bill Clinton and Elvis, Jason has a souvenir sheet with two stamps on it. This is from Chad. It's two stamps but they're next to each other. And it's an older Elvis wearing one of his jumpsuits, playing guitar, but he's standing next to Bill Clinton playing saxophone. So old Elvis and Clinton, even though Clinton mentioned that he actually preferred the young Elvis. Exactly. Exactly.

And there's a lot of pairings. Paul and Joan and fellow producers, Selena, Sayah Reynolds looked through a lot of these stamps spotting different celebrities. Since his Robert Redford, Marilyn Monroe. Michelle Fiverr. Ms. Taylor. Eddie Murphy. Redford, Maryland, and Rome. Which I'll fight for. Mm-hmm, this tailor. Eddie Murphy. Oh, Eddie Murphy, yeah.

That's a huge variety of people. Many of them living. That's impressive. It is, it is. And I do want to highlight that there's some controversy around this. So there are some fakes out there where a printer just puts a government's name on a stamp. And there are times when a company completely outside of a country might be in charge of issuing or designing commemorative postage, but with the approval of the country. And sometimes a company might have a contract to make stamps, but they don't really mean

for them to ever be used to send letters. Oh, so there might be stamps that bear the country's name, but they never really appear in that country at all. Like they're specifically meant to just attract collectors. Yeah, and there's a term for this kind of stamp. It's called a speculative stamp, and collectors are divided on these. So it went away. Well, so it could be seen as excessive among some collectors, and this debate goes back

a long way. When the US issued its first commemorative stamps to mark the Colombian exposition in 1893, there was briefly a group called the Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps that told collectors not to buy these, but that grouped in last very long. The SSS didn't just take off. Light the world on fire. Okay. Okay. So some collectors, they still want speculative stamps,

even though those stamps might not be meant for the actual purpose of stamps, which is to move mail in the country that they're issued. Exactly, yeah. And these stamps, even if they're controversial, they're really interesting to see, because US pop culture doesn't just exist in the US. It's an international export.

And stamps are now part of that too. And so it's kind of cool to see our culture because US pop culture doesn't just exist in the US. It's an international export. And stamps are now part of that too. And so it's kind of cool to see our culture reflected back to us in the form of these international stamps. Yeah, and for collectors, it gives you way more variety than you get with US commemorative stamps. Definitely. And if you're a fan of an artist,

this might be the only chance you'll have to see them on a stamp. For example, we might not see a Tina Turner stamp for a few years in the US, if we see one at all, but you can go online and find a stamp from Grenada from 1988 with Tina Turner. And that same issue they have Madonna and Elton John and Bruce Springsteen.

And you can buy those and own a little piece of that history for not very much money. So does this influence the US Postal Service to maybe issue more pop culture stamps, maybe with stars from other countries too? Well, so since the 90s, it's become a bit more complicated to put pop culture icons from anywhere on a stamp, in part because of how sophisticated the pop culture industry has become, the Elvis estate worked closely with the Postal Service on an Elvis stamp, but that's not always how these things go. Daniel Piazza at the Smithsonian Postal Museum told me about it. You don't have to pay royalties for a statue of George Washington

in the Capitol building to put it on a stamp, but with all of these sports legends and Hollywood actors and singers, these are years of complicated negotiations, sometimes with their estates to get the right licensing and permissions and images. And you have to go to all of the descendants, or at least the sort of legally entitled descendants, and make sure that they agree with and approve of the image that's used and so forth.

Such a mess. As soon as one thing gets easier, you know, like the idea of what is worth commemorating, all the lawyers get involved to make it worse. Oh, well, so maybe they're just kind of balanced in the universe when it comes to celebrity stamps. I think so. Yeah, but I do love the idea of getting a Michelle Fifer stamp from somewhere like Sierra Leone. That's just a stunning thing to know that that exists or it could exist in the world. Thank you so much Gabe, this is awesome. Thank you.

99% Invisible was produced this week by Gabe Bullard and edited by Delaney Hall with additional editing by Kelly Prime, sound mix by Dara Hirsch, fact checking by Graham Haysha, music by Swan Riao. Kathy too is our executive producer, Kurt Colstedt is our digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Christopher Johnson, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Le, Jason Dillion, Lashemadon,

Jacob Moltenado Medina, Joe Rosenberg, and me Roman Mars. We are part of this literature and serious exam podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. Eric and me Roman Mars. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org. you