Postal Service Honors Boats Featured on Vintage Mahogany Speedboats Stamps

Special Postmark, Souvenir Envelope Available

CARNELIAN BAY, CA — The U.S. Postal Service dedicated the Vintage Mahogany Speedboats stamps today at the opening ceremony of the Lake Tahoe Concours d’Elegance 2007.

The stamp dedication ceremony commemorated the four boats that served as the models for the Vintage Mahogany Speedboats commemorative postage stamps, issued nationwide last week.

The four subjects on the sheet of 12 stamps showcase the polished mahogany and gleaming chrome that characterize the nation's historic wooden motorboats. Each vintage watercraft is still in use today:

Frolic, a 1915 Hutchinson Brothers launch.
Dispatch, a 1931 Gar Wood triple cockpit runabout.
Thunderbird, a 1939 Hacker-Craft commuter boat.
Duckers, a 1954 Chris-Craft Racing Runabout.

The stamps and the classic wooden boats are prominently featured during the 35th Annual Lake Tahoe Concours d’Elegance, a three-day competitive and educational event highlighting classic wood watercraft August 9 through August 11, 2007.

The Postal Service has created a special pictorial postmark and souvenir envelope to mark the occasion. To purchase either, a USPS booth will be available throughout the event. Lake Tahoe Speed Boats

The souvenir envelope features three of the boats that appear on the stamps, speeding across the waters of Lake Tahoe. The envelope sells for $5 at the event and at the Carnelian Bay Post Office while supplies last.

The postmark is free with the purchase of a First-Class stamp and is also available by mail for 30 days after the event.

To obtain the postmark, affix a First-Class postage stamp to an envelope, address the envelope (to yourself or others) and place it into a larger envelope addressed to: Postmaster, 5075 N Lake Blvd, Carnelian Bay, CA, 96140-9998. After applying the postmark, the Postal Service returns the envelopes through the mail. All orders must be postmarked by September 8, 2007.

To obtain 300 dpi images of the stamps visit: http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2007stamps/.
Broadcast quality b-roll is available via Pathfire and standard broadcast through the USPS Newsroom at http://www.usps.com/news.

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Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at www.usps.com/news.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation, 146 million homes and businesses, six days a week. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $73 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.