Personalized Stamps Making a Comeback?

I used to be an avid stamp collector. Color me nerd, but it was a great way to learn about the world - history, politics, science, geography, you name it, there was a stamp for it. You had to learn how to distinguish between stamps that appeared to be the same, yet had minor differences that could be the difference between a 5 cent common or a $125 rarity.

So, when the USPS began a program to allow consumers to print off their own personalized stamps, stamp collecting definitely hit the end of the road - after all, how can you collect all stamps from a series or year when people are putting Fido, Max, Spot, Tiger, or Rover on their stamps.

Well, it turns out that people weren't just putting their pets on the stamps. The folks at The Smoking Gun had put a rogue's gallery worth of folks on their personalized stamps including:

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the New York couple executed in 1953 for spying for the Soviet Union. On the succeeding pages you'll find stamps honoring Monica Lewinsky's blue dress (the one splattered with Bill Clinton's DNA); Linda Tripp; deposed Yugoslavian ethnic cleanser/war criminal Slobodan Milosevic; MIA labor racketeer Jimmy Hoffa; executed Romanian dictator/Communist oppressor Nicolae Ceaucescu; former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey and alleged gay lover Golan Cipel; and high school and college yearbook photos of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who used the postal service to deliver his homemade bombs.

Well, despite that little problem, the USPS is putting this contract out to bid.

Go figure.