Congratulations, Serena Hsu, grand prize winner of our 11th annual Tucson Birthday Stamp Design Contest!

Ms. Hsu was inspired by a visit to Barrio Viejo. She used colored pencils to create a lovely vignette with a red door, potted cacti, and traditional decoration known as sarta de chiles in Tucson.

Says Ms. Hsu,

We do, too!

While Ms. Hsu was our grand prize winner, we don’t want to leave out the other 14 winners. Five kids in three age categories were honored and awarded prizes for their designs.

The fifteen winners of 2018 are: (ages 5-8) Leah Andrews, Roshan Gupta*, Jade Goslin, Lincoln Manuel*, Lucas Kresha; (ages 9-12) Nola Gelling*, Marc Perez*, Maylee McCool, Audrey Fiore, Leeah Payne; (ages 13-17) Serena Hsu, Katherine Douglas*, Jada Love, Lee MacDonald, Kaelyn Hestand*. Also pictured: special guest Don Regole (who designed the pictorial postmark) and Education Director Lisa Dembowski. (* means that child’s design was selected as envelope artwork.)

All fifteen winning designs will be on exhibit at the Postal History Foundation until the 2019 Awards ceremony next year. They are also part of our online gallery.

To order custom postage stamps with this design and envelopes with some of the other kids’ designs, click here.

To view the press release of this event, click here.

“Prospectors and Postmen: Mail Delivery in the Boom Days of Mining” presents photographs, contemporaneous mail, and other documents to tell the story of early mail and freight transportation methods, with particular emphasis on Arizona. The exhibit includes information on the Colorado River steamboats, pack animals, wagons, coaches, buckboards, and “pony express” style horseback mail delivery.

Prospectors and Postmen: Mail Delivery in the Boom Days of Mining exhibit runs through May 2018.

All supplies needed are in our Slusser Library here.
These are available Monday – Friday starting December 1st – 22nd – 10am to 2 pm.

If you want to mail the letters or cards in our USPS post office, bring money to buy stamps.

Families, as always, can visit the library and read books, or pick out stamps from our treasure chest to start a stamp collection.

The top five winners from three age groups were given awards and prizes today at the ceremony. Every student was given a Bookmans gift certificate (donated by Bookmans), collectible stamps, and other prizes that were selected to match each child’s interests.

In addition, two designs from each age group were selected and printed as collectible art work on envelopes (“cachets”). Visit our main contest page to see the cachets and learn how to purchase them (proceeds to benefit our Youth Education Thru Stamps (YES) program.

The top fifteen winners will be on exhibit at the Postal History Foundation until the 2018 Awards ceremony next year. Thanks to all who entered, and congratulations to our top fifteen designers!

*  denotes a cachet winner; ** denotes Grand Prize Winner

Pollinators are responsible for one-third of our food and drink and $20 BILLION (with a BEE) in products annually in the United States.

We hope you’ll be able to visit us and see the Pollinator exhibit (through Fall 2017).

We also invite you to play our Pollinators quiz!