Farley's Follies

The National Postal Museum has an interesting on-line exhibit about James A. Farley who was Franklin D. Roosevelt's Postmaster General in the 1930s.

While Roosevelt was a stamp collector, Farley was not.

However, according to the NPM, Farley did everything he could to "ingratiate" himself to the president by allowing him to design stamps and having special printings which he gave to Roosevelt and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes.

Ickes was the only other stamp collector in the Roosevelt cabinet.

Causing a storm of protest, these special printings (known as Farley's Follies) eventually became available for purchase by the public in March of 1935 and are listed in Scott Catalogue as 752 through 771.

To learn more about "Farley's Follies", click here.

To learn more about Roosevelt and the stamp design he was working on just hours before his death in 1945, check out the Syracuse Stamp Club's "Stamp of the Month" for May-June by clicking here.