Poster Stamps

Miniature copiers of full-sized posters, printed and collected in the early 1900s

I can’t remember where I got them, but some years ago, I got two well-used albums of poster stamps. This is what Perplexity AI says about them:

Poster stamps are small, gummed advertising labels, slightly larger than postage stamps, popular from the late 19th century through the 1920s, often featuring miniature poster art for products, events, or causes.

They peaked in the 1910s “Golden Era,” with a craze among collectors who pasted them into special albums or scrapbooks, much like postage stamps. Production continued into the 1920s and 1930s, but interest waned after World War I, though they remained affordable souvenirs for children and adults.

People got them free from companies, contests, or events and mounted them in dedicated albums. Today, they’re valued by philatelists as ‘cinderella stamps’—non-postal labels—often found in vintage scrapbooks at auctions or online.

The Poster Stamp Collectors Club is a good source of information. They write:

Poster Stamps can be classified by their purpose into categories:

As promotion for an event- such as a concert, exposition, or exhibit, or

As commercial advertising- for a product or service or tourist location, or

As political or social propaganda- for a movement or a political candidate, or

As promotion of charitable giving to a particular need or non-profit group, or

As a souvenir to be saved, commemorating something: that is, a poster stamp that is propaganda, but is “preaching to the choir”.

Poster Stamps proved to be a powerful medium in the early 1900’s, and almost immediately both children and adults began saving them. But the peak of popularity was long ago, thus many stamp collectors have not seen Poster Stamps and are surprised by their beauty and appeal.