To be honest, I don’t know what the USPS is thinking when it comes to issuing uncut press sheets.

In 2012, the USPS announced that it was going to issue 1000 imperforate uncut press sheets of the Major League Baseball players issue. That’s right: there were no die cuts on these press sheets. The 1000 sheet quantity was sold out about a month before the first day of issue due to pre-orders for these special panes with no die cuts. Without notice, the USPS increased the quantity to 2500 uncut press sheets and put them back on sale again. If 1000 sheets sold so quickly, the USPS didn’t want to lose out on even more profit. They know these stamps will never be used for postage. The 2500 sheets sold out too. Again, before the first day of issue.

To make a long story short, the USPS has been going back and forth about issuing uncut press sheets without die cuts. Originally they said it was going to be the baseball players issue only. However, the USPS has released others and they have plans to release more in the future.

I do not collect, nor do I deal in press sheets.To be honest, I don’t care what the USPS does because I plan to ignore these issues.

Some collectors are upset because if album makers show these stamps in the printed album pages, they are going to have an empty space in their album. And who wants to spend $100 or so for a sheet of stmps to get a single stamp or perhaps one pane? Some collectors were joining together to buy a press sheet to divide it up amongst themselves. Therefore, no one was out an exhorbitant amount of money.

I wonder how many collectors who previously bought press sheets have stopped due to the confusing policies and lack of notice of the availability of some issues? Did the USPS kill the goose that laid the golden egg?

As many of you know, there have been some self adhesive issues that have been found missing the die cuts. These are production errors and they are listed in the Scott catalog. These errors sell for several hundred or a few thousand dollars. If the USPS continues to issue press sheets without die cuts, what is that going to do to the normal panes? If you bought a normal pane that is missing the die cuts, your major error now has minimal value. Unless there is a way to distinguish the normal issue from the press sheets, people are going to think your error pane came from the press sheet.

If your normal pane had some die cuts, but others within the pane were imperforate, that would qualify it as an error. Or if there were any other markings on the pane to distinguish it from the press sheets, that could mean your error pane with missing die cuts did not come from the press sheets.

It’s unclear yet how the Scott catalog editors will list these uncut press sheets without die cuts. They could not list them at all. In my opinion, I doubt they will receive a full listing in the Scott catalog. I think the catalog editors will list them as a footnote so that the record is straight.