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Stamps have been issued in other shapes, however, including circular, triangular and pentagonal. Sierra Leone and Tonga have issued Self-adhesive Stamp s in the shape of fruit, Bhutan has issued a stamp with its national anthem on a playable record, etc. Stamps have also been made of materials other than paper, commonly Embossed foil (sometimes of Gold ); Switzerland made a stamp partly out of Lace and one out of Wood , the United States produced one made of plastic, and the German Democratic Republic once issued a stamp made entirely of synthetic Chemical s. In the Netherlands a stamp was issued made of silver foil. HISTORY ]] The adhesive postage stamp and the uniform postage rate were devised in . In it he argued that it would be better for the sender to pay the cost of delivery, rather than the addressee who could refuse the letter if they could not or did not want to pay, as sometimes happened at the time. He also argued for a uniform rate of one penny per letter, no matter where its destination. Accounting costs for the government would thus be cut; postage would no longer be charged according to how far a letter had travelled, which required each letter to have an individual entry in the Royal Mail 's accounts. Chalmers' ideas were finally adopted by Parliament in August, 1839 and the General Post Office launched the Penny Post service the next year in 1840 with two prepaid-postage pictorial envelopes or wrappers: one valued at a penny and one valued at twopence. Three months later the first prepaid-postage stamp, known as the ) and the South Africa n "International Letter Rate" stamp. DISPENSING Since their inception there have been numerous innovative developments in how stamps have been dispensed and sold. Recently one has been able to print up postage stamps from one's personal computer. In 2002 the United States Postal Service licensed Stamps.com to issue NetStamps , Digital Stamp s that can be printed up on special labels and, unlike previous postage the USPS licensed individuals to print up on their computers, that can be used on any date, not just the date one prints them up. (There are other types of Computer-vended Postage as well.) For instance, ATM stamps are sold at Automatic Teller Machine s (ATMs), although they may be sold via stamp catalogues of the postal service or possibly at philatelic windows. They must be the same size and thickness as currency in order to be dispensed by the ATM. TYPES OF STAMPS postage stamp, the first in the world to feature mining]]
SOUVENIR SHEETS Postage stamps are sometimes issued in souvenir sheets containing just one or a small number of stamps. Souvenir sheets typically include additional artwork or information printed on the selvage (border surrounding the stamps). CINDERELLAS Stamps should be distinguished from '' Cinderellas '', stamp-like labels that resemble, but are not, postage stamps. Cinderellas might be commemorative labels, such as those issued in Buffalo, New York to support the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in 1901 (one of these has now been converted into an actual postage stamp), or may be postage stamps for Imaginary Countries or Micronation s. TEST STAMPS "Test stamps" are not actually postage stamps but for testing printing processes, equipment, and the like. In the United Kingdom test stamps for coil dispensing machines are sometimes known as poached eggs, because of their design. They are printed the same size and format as the definitives and perforated in the same manner. The amount of ink used is also the same as actual postage stamps, so that they can be used to test the machines with material as close as possible to the actual postage stamps. The colour of these test stamps was changed from green to black after 1937 when some test coils were accidentally left in a machine and used as half-penny stamps. At the time of this colour change, text was also added to the centre of the labels indicating their use. COLLECTING ''Main article: Stamp Collecting '' Stamp Collecting is a popular Hobby . Some countries are known for producing stamps intended for collectors rather than postal use. This practice produces a significant portion of the countries' government revenues. This has been condoned by the collecting community for places such as Liechtenstein and Pitcairn Islands that have followed relatively conservative stamp issuing policies. Abuses of this policy, however, are generally condemned. Among the most notable abusers have been Nicholas F. Seebeck and the component states of the United Arab Emirates . Seebeck operated in the 1890s as an agent of Hamilton Bank Note Company when he approached several Latin American countries with an offer to produce their entire postage stamp needs for free. In return he would have the exclusive rights to market the remainders of the stamps to collectors. Each year a new issue of stamps was produced whose postal validity would expire at the end of the year; this assured Seebeck of a continuing supply of remainders. In the 1960s certain stamp printers such as the Barody Stamp Company arranged contracts to produce quantities of stamps for the separate Emirates and other countries. These abuses combined with the sparse population of the desert states earned them the reputation of being known as the "sand dune" countries. The combination of hundreds of countries, each producing scores of different stamps each year has resulted in a total of some 400,000 different types in existence as of 2000. In recent years, the annual world output has averaged about 10,000 types each year. FAMOUS STAMPS See Also: List of postage stamps
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