Meet a Postal Service groupie, the woman who will collect every stamp

The blue curtain is about to fall, prepared for the big expose. The coloration guard has marched in, the learn of ceremonies has cracked a couple of jokes and the names of significant visitors have been study. But Joan Tittle is fast paced looking in other places.

Sitting in a seat marked “reserved,” the 78-calendar year-old female with small grey curls is waving to staff members, on the lookout for the other fanatics she is aware of and viewing for reactions on the faces of the 100-some men and women in the group.

The curtain drops.

Driving it: stamps. Ta-da!

“That’s good,” Tittle claims, her gold hoop earrings tilting as she seems to be at the blown-up photograph. The four stamps, debuting Thursday at a ceremony at the FreshFarm sector close to the White Dwelling, feature vibrant scenes of a farmers market place: eggs and sunflowers, peppers and loaves of bread, all painted in overflowing baskets with small handwritten value tags.

The Philadelphia lady isn’t impressed with the bustling farmers market where the stamps are remaining unveiled she’s listed here to make confident she gets more than enough of them. Tittle is a stamp collector, though collector is as well uninteresting a phrase to explain her pursuit. A handful of a long time immediately after she retired from currently being a higher faculty health club trainer in 1993, she started traveling around the nation attending as several “first working day of issue” ceremonies as attainable. Civil War stamps, Kwanzaa stamps, Joe DiMaggio stamps — she wishes them all. And not just the stamps. Tittle collects the memento envelopes the stamps arrive in, the programs from the ceremony and the signature of the postmaster typical. She’s been to a few stamp unveilings in the past two months.

“We not only celebrate this great stamp, we are also celebrating our 15th yearly farmers current market 7 days,” states the man on stage, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Today, we have in excess of 8,268 marketplaces throughout the United States.”

Farmers markets, as the Secretary factors out, are a historical establishment that have knowledgeable a extraordinary rise in popularity considering that the mid-90s.

The exact are not able to be said for the historic establishment of postage stamps, which are staying made use of at lows not registered given that the early 1980s.

The U.S. Postal Service’s tries to attract new stamp admirers in this e-mail era can be observed in Tittle’s stamp albums, which fill a file cupboard, tv stand, laptop or computer armoire and a few bookcases in her household. Stamps in latest several years have featured Finding Nemo, Jimi Hendrix and Harry Potter.

This press to attraction to a younger viewers has not been achieved with common acclaim. A previous postmaster standard very publicly resigned from the committee that chooses the models of the stamps unveiled each and every calendar year. Benjamin F. Bailar accused the Postal Company of “prostituting” its stamp software “in the pursuit of possibly illusory gains.”

It is difficult to think about several younger people using on the business of 1st-working day stamp gathering like Tittle, who is now pushing by way of the group of center-aged girls sporting farmers industry-inspired straw hats at the ceremony.

“Excuse me, justification me,” she says.

“Oh, hello Mayday!,” she states to yet another collector. “Is the line truly this lengthy?”

Her husband, George, follows guiding, carrying two black luggage comprehensive of Tittle’s stamp paraphernalia. He is utilized to her obsessive fandom — she also follows the Philadelphia Eagles and has attended all but just one of their dwelling video games because 1958. When she’s not at online games or on stamp outings, the few, married for 49 years, work out with each other at the YMCA.

“Okay, what do we need to have,” George claims as they in close proximity to the blue tents in the middle of the farmers sector. Tittle is eyeing the line, creating guaranteed she will be ready to get more than enough envelopes marked with “cancellation” in black ink, which signifies the stamp was purchased on the working day it was released and are unable to be utilised, as a result raising its value.

When they make it to the front of the line, Tittle orders 4 sheets of 20 stamps.

“We’re out,” says a female in a USPS polo. “There’s only a single left.”

This hardly ever happens. Perhaps the Postal Company actually hit it off with this one particular, attracting a lot more people to accumulate the stamp with the entice of its bright shades and fashionable topic. Or probably there had been just folks at the sector who required stamps.

“I know what this usually means,” George states. He leaves to go locate an genuine article business office, where he is in a position to purchase her 3 more sheets for $9.80 a piece.

In the meantime, Tittle sets out to come across the postmaster basic, so she can request him to sign the couple added courses slipped to her by a mate from the Postal Support.

“I know,” Tittle states, holding her stamps and smiling. “I’m out of handle.”