How Significant Are Stamps Nowadays?

1. How significant is this stamp to you?

  I got this stamp from my pen pal in 2015. She introduced a lot of precious and pretty stamps to me because she enjoyed collecting stamps at that time. She sends beautiful stamps every time she writes to me. It is because of her that I have collected so many valuable stamps.

1. Why is this stamp representative of the country?

   This stamp belongs to the “Forever” series. A forever stamp is a postage stamp in the United States that is valid for First-Class postage no matter when it is used. It is a kind of stamp that never declines in value. You can see lots of tomatoes on it. I think it is very American style. Every time when I see the tomatoes, I can imagine the Americans sitting together in a restaurant and ordering French fries with ketchups. Tomato is a sample of the fast-food culture in America.

1. What is the role and value of stamps today?

    As we all know, we are now living in an era of science and technology. There are more faster and convenient ways to transfer information than using sending letters with stamps. We might think that stamps are becoming useless nowadays. On the contrary, stamps are still precious in three ways. Firstly, stamps are considered as a part of state property as postage. Secondly, stamps represent the unique culture, economy and polity system of different countries. Because we can know more about a country after analyzing the stamps published by the government. The last but the most important thing is that stamps help people understand their history. For example, historians in China study the stamps issued during the Cultural Revolution Period to collect more information about that particular period of time. Because stamps are important evidences of ideological, economical and cultural changes existing at that period. Besides, stamps can also be the representative products of protest. For example, Korea published Dokdo stamps in September 15th, 2014 to express their anger and dissatisfaction of the encroachment of Dokdo from Japan. Some senators of Korea even sent letters with this special stamp on it to Japan at that time. Even though we don’t usually use stamps today, it still exists as a sample of culture and history.