The USPS Stamps Forever website devoted the final installment of its Stamp Encore series to the winner of the first-of-its-kind contest: the 2018 Mister Rogers stamp.
Last summer, as part of the organization’s 250th anniversary celebration, USPS invited customers and employees to vote on a favorite from among 25 releases issued between 1997 and 2022.
The contest was called Stamp Encore because the winning stamp would be reissued.
Voting was open July 23-Sept. 30, and nearly 600,000 ballots were cast. The top vote-getter was kept under wraps until the big reveal at the Boston 2026 World Expo last month.
“The Stamp Encore project really caused us to do things differently than we’ve done — I would say ever,” Lisa Bobb-Semple, USPS director of stamp services, said in the article on the Stamps Forever website. “Everybody brainstormed and figured out what we could do differently.”
One of those differences was a bit of traveling theater.
“To build anticipation for the Stamp Encore unveiling, we took the package containing the winning stamp to earlier first-day-of-issue ceremonies to continue that drumbeat” of anticipation, she said.
In addition to being an engaging way to celebrate the organization’s 250th anniversary, Bobb-Semple said she saw Stamp Encore as a means of giving USPS insight into what customers want to see reflected on their postage.
“I think a lot of times people are selecting stamps because of what message that stamp sends — what you’re trying to communicate and what it means,” she said.
She said she was not surprised by the contest’s outcome because the Mister Rogers stamp “was extremely, wildly popular when it first came out.”
For Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS and the creator of the 2018 stamp’s design, the message of Mister Rogers is timeless.
“Fred Rogers is the embodiment of a good person and saw good qualities in everyone,” Noyes said in the article. “We are in need of such human beings in this world. I believe that is why this stamp won the competition.”
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