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Cutting The Wait 

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

Under present rules, most people have to be dead ten years before they can appear 
on a U-S stamp.

Ten years isn't a law, it's a Postal Service rule. And now Linn's Stamp News 
reports it may be changed to FIVE years. By the time a decade has passed, people 
have forgotten who some celebrities were. Postal officials want to repeat their 
biggest stamp success story, says reporter Bill McAllister, the phenomenal sales of 
the Elvis Presley stamp.

"More contemporary designs might be this secret."
RUNS :03

Of course, there are celebrities whose fame was long gone before they died. How 
many times have you heard of the passing of an entertainer and said, "I didn't 
even know he was still alive!"

"The public memory of celebrities fades fast."
RUNS :03

The Postal Service is also under pressure from two fronts, says McAllister: 
Personalized postage, where anyone with the rights can create a stamp, and 
Capitol Hill.

"There's pressure building in Congress for a Rosa Parks stamp to honor the civil 
rights leader. That would require  breaking the ten-year rule, because the sponsors 
wanted this stamp right away."
RUNS: :12

And, after all, the thinking goes, stamps for Rosa Parks and Bob Hope and other 
superstars are inevitable. Why wait?

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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