page_title: Postage stamps and postal history of the United States
section_title: Presidential Issue of 1938
hierarchical_section_title: Postage stamps and postal history of the United States / The 1920s and 1930s / Presidential Issue of 1938
caption_attribution_description: English: Presidential Series 1938
context_page_description: The history of postal service of the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters, whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later also encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.
  In the earliest days, ship captains arriving in port with stampless mail would advertise in the local newspaper names of those having mail and for them to come collect and pay for it, if not already paid for by the sender. Postal delivery in the United States was a matter of haphazard local organization until after the Revolutionary War, when eventually a national postal system was established. Stampless letters, paid for by the receiver, and private postal systems, were gradually phased out after the introduction of adhesive postage stamps, first issued by the U.S. government post office July 1, 1847, in the denominations of five and ten cents, with the use of stamps made mandatory in 1855.
  The issue and use of adhesive postage stamps continued during the 19th century primarily for first class mail.
context_section_description: The famous Presidential Issue, known as "Prexies" for short, came out in 1938. The series featured all 29 U.S. presidents through Calvin Coolidge, each of whom appeared in profile as a small sculptural bust. Values of 50¢ and lower were mono-colored; on the $1, $2, and $5 stamps the presidents' images were printed in black on white, surrounded by colored lettering and ornamentation. Up through the 22¢ Cleveland stamp, the denomination assigned to each president corresponds to his position in the presidential roster: thus the first president, Washington, is on the 1¢ value, the seventeenth, Andrew Johnson, is on the 17¢ value, etc. Additional stamps depict Franklin (½¢), Martha Washington (1½¢), and the White House (4½¢). Many of the values were included merely to place the presidents in proper numerical order and did not necessarily correspond to a postal rate; and one of the (difficult) games for Prexie collectors is to find a cover with, for instance, a single 16¢ stamp that pays a combination of rate and fees valid during the Prexies' period of usage. Many such covers remain to be discovered; some sellers on eBay have been surprised to discover an ordinary-seeming cover bid up to several hundred dollars because it was one of the sought-after solo usages. The Presidential issue remained in distribution for many years. Not until 1954 did the Post Office begin replacing its values with the stamps of a new definitive issue, the Liberty series.
caption: Presidential issue of 1938
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