Year of the Rat Stamps Celebrates Lunar New Year Forever First Class Postage Stamps

The rat opens the twelve-year cycle, which gives this sheet a particular place in the series - it is the first of the current run of mask designs, and the one every subsequent animal was matched to. The mask is patterned in the style of Asian textiles and photographed against a plain ground, with the full zodiac drawn along the selvage.

Lunar New Year is the year's most important holiday across many Asian communities, and the preparation is as much of it as the day: shopping, decorating, cleaning the house and the street so the year starts fresh. The mail follows the same schedule, concentrated into the two or three weeks beforehand. Sheets of 20. Rat years come round every twelve, so the next after 2020 is 2032, and buyers born in one tend to keep a sheet aside. Forever value applies to whatever is left.