philately Philately (; ) is the study of postage stamps and postal history. It also refers to the collection and appreciation of stamps and other philatelic products. While closely associated with stamp collecting and the study of postage, it is possibl ...

, the denomination is the "inscribed value of a stamp". The denomination is not the same as the value of a stamp on the philatelic market, which is usually different, and the denominations of a country's stamps and money do not necessarily match. For instance, there might be a 47¢ stamp to pay a particular postal rate but there is unlikely to be a 47¢ coin.

No denomination shown

Where no denomination is shown, it may be because the stamp is deliberately non-denominated to pay the cost of a particular service, or because the stamp is not a postage stamp. It might be a cinderella stamp of some kind such as a poster stamp or charity label.

Letter-denominated first-class stamps

: Faced in 1978 with the problem of supplying stamps to satisfy an anticipated postal rate increase that had not yet been specifically determined, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp bearing the letter "A" instead of a numerical denomination, announcing that this stamp would cover whatever new first-class postal rate was approved by congress. Subsequent decades saw the issue of B, C, D, E, F, G and H stamps that similarly covered the periodic later rate increases.

Forever stamps

In 2007 the United States Postal Service issued its first undenominated "Forever stamp", which was guaranteed to remain valid for first-class postage despite any and all future postal rate increases. By 2011, the vast majority of new U. S. postal issues were forever stamps, although some new stamps still carried specific denominations. In 2015 the forever stamp was expanded into all other stamps (additional ounce, postcard, non-machinable surcharge, two ounce and three ounce) and stamps either have their intended purpose or the word "FOREVER" printed on them instead of a denomination.

Changes of denomination

Sometimes a stamp may have its denomination changed by the post office due to local circumstances. For instance, stocks of one value may be overprinted to show a different value due to stock shortages. In cases of hyper-inflation stamps have had their denomination changed by overprinting as existing denominations became worthless. In other cases, changes to the local currency have led to changes in denomination. For instance, when the Ryukyu Islands (at the time a United States protectorate) changed its currency from Yen to Dollars, a number of airmail stamps originally printed with Yen values were overprinted and re-denominated to cents in 1959–1960.

Hyperinflation Denominations

During periods of

hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real versus nominal value (economics), real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimiz ...

, non-overprinted postage stamps of extraordinary denominations have been issued. As one example, in

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, on 15 July 1946 an AP40,000 ( Hungarian adópengő) stamp featuring a diesel

locomotive A locomotive is a rail transport, rail vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, Push–pull train, push–pull operation has become common, and in the pursuit for ...

was issued. This was the equivalent of 80 quadrillion pengő (P80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

References