Three very bad man are after the money they think Audrey Hepburn has because her husband stole it from them and he has turned up dead, thrown from a train in his pajamas. The police gave her the small travel bag they found with his body. Inside were a few francs, a pocket-sized appointment book, a ship ticket to Venezuela, four countries’ passports with the same picture but four different names, a pen, a stamped but not sealed envelope, a toothbrush and a tin of tooth powder, a latch key, and a comb.
The plot twist was hiding in plain sight, a strategy used to make the rare appear common enough to be overlooked as a possibility by everyone until near the end of the film.
While strolling about an open-air craft fair with Cary Grant, Audrey was struck with an aha! moment. Her husband had bought valuable collector stamps with the stolen millions and pasted them on an envelope addressed to her so she’d be sure to get them. The seemingly humble, everyday stamps were the money.
Just then, her little scamp nephew Jean-Louis shows them a bag filled with hundreds of stamps he got for just the three stamps that were on the envelope. Cary and Audrey search the tents and booths of the open-air market for the man who has the three stamps. The plot has him an honest vendor with a conscience so he can utter his lines, “I was expecting you. I knew you would come. Look at them, madame. Have you ever, in your entire life, seen anything so beautiful?”
July 1st is National Postage Stamp Day. What Are Your Plans?
Once upon a time there was no charge for mailing a letter you had written and addressed to another
The delivery fee was based upon the weight of the letter and the distance it traveled, a sensible system. The fee was to be paid by whoever received the letter, not so sensible because much could go wrong, meaning the early version of the postal service lost money.
Along came Rowland Hill
He came up with the idea of collecting the delivery fee in advance. The receipt showing the amount paid was recorded on a small piece of paper that was fixed to the envelope with adhesive gum. Britain’s Penny Black was the First Postage Stamp, and the one that started the whole system of sending letters and packages by mail. That’s one version. Another significantly narrows the definition, calling it the first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. There’s that and plenty more if you really want to get into stamps, but back to our story:
Postage stamps went like totally epic viral
Every country around the world adopted the idea of the prepaid postage stamp, printed in small denominations, and sold at face value.
Technology moved slowly in the stamp world
For many years, postal clerks tore the number of stamps you wanted from a page about the size of a sheet of standard printer paper. The perforated edges made tearing from the page easy. Collectors call them perfs, and carry around little pocket tools that measure the number of perfs per inch.
A thin coating of water-activated glue was attached to the back of the stamp
Licking the back of stamps and pasting them to an envelope was the traditional method that lasted for more than 100 years. In some offices you’d find those little doohickeys with wet sponge inserts for those who stamped a lot of envelopes. The next big step was from lick-and-stick to peel-and-stick, and stamp-licking fell out of favor. Bootlicking, on the other hand, is as popular as ever.
Booklets of stamps were easier to handle than loose stamps
Then someone figured out how to print stamps in continuous coils. Rolls were lots easier to deal with than sheets, and various inventions popped up to make applying stamps even easier. Rolls of stamps were easy to dispense from coin-operated self-service machines in post offices, bus and train stations, and other public places. I never knew that you could buy rolls of 10,000 stamps, did you?
Today’s technologies allow for nearly unlimited possibilities of colors, shapes, and sizes
Most of us have seen portrait and landscape rectangles, with maybe a square or triangle every now and then. Here are a few I never knew existed.
There are 9 categories of US stamps
Or 14 or 21 or 7, depending upon your source. If you want to go deep, jump in here at encyclopaediia.blog
In spite of postage meters, preprinted envelopes, and printing our own postage, the USPS keeps adding new postage stamps every year. Here are a few highlights for this year’s holiday season postage stamp parties:
The United States issued the country’s first stamps in 1847
Ben Franklin was on the five-cent stamp and George Washington was on the ten-center. Clerks used scissors to cut them from sheets. Since then the United States Postal Service has issued 4,000 different versions of postage stamps.
George Washington appears on 300 different stamps
That’s the most appearances of the 800 issues featuring notable individuals. In 2025, the USPS added Allen Toussaint, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Betty White to the list of those with their own stamp.
The best-selling U.S. postage stamp is the United States Flag Series. The first stamp with an American flag was in 1901 and since then, the Stars and Stripes has appeared on hundreds of different stamp designs.
Stamps used as fundraisers are called semipostals. Surcharges are added on to the cost of the basic stamp and that part of your money goes to specific causes, such as the American Cancer Society, Alzheimer’s, and the Audubon Society.
Forever stamps are undated and always valid, regardless of rate increases. The Postal Service has sold 500 billion of them.
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My name is David Allan Van Nostrand
I wrote this story and more than 500 others posted here on letstakeacloserlook.com. Some are on the serious side, some show a glimmer of wit, and a few are eye-opening, but all are presentations of facts I was able to find during a couple of days of poking around. I’ve investigated thousands of things big and small. What can I take a closer look at for you?
Bonus
The Curtis Aircraft Company built and sold biplanes with the model designation JN and flyers called them Jennies. Back in those days, it was practical to print only one color at a time. On the first pass through the press, the red frame was printed around the outside of the stamp. When those sheets were run back through the press, the blue Jenny biplane was printed upside-down, the result was what stampers call the Inverted Jenny.
