Castillo de San Marcos Priority Mail Postage Stamps

The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest masonry fort in the United States, begun by the Spanish at St. Augustine, Florida, in the 1670s. The stamp shows it from the northeast in the first light off Matanzas Bay - a digital illustration by Dan Cosgrove worked up from a photograph, with Greg Breeding as art director. It was issued as a Priority Mail stamp in panes of four, at a face value of $7.95.

Priority Mail stamps are denominated rather than Forever, so this one is worth exactly $7.95 toward postage; if the Priority rate has gone up since it was printed, you make up the difference and the stamp still does most of the work. The practical use is skipping the counter altogether - weigh the box at home, put the stamps on, drop it off. Collectors buy the pane of four intact and leave it that way. Either way it looks like mail rather than a shipment, which matters for anything you are sending to a person instead of a customer.