About This Stamp
The Pine Cone definitive stamp was issued on November 5, 1993, at the Midaphil ’93 stamp show in Kansas City as a die-cut, self-adhesive pane of 18. It was the first self-adhesive stamp to be printed solely by the intaglio process.
Paul Breeden designed the green, red-brown, and black stamp, which Banknote Corporation of America printed on a four-color webfed intaglio press. The panes of 18 were arranged vertically, three across by six down with a horizontal peel-off strip in the middle. The intaglio printing plates contained 324 subjects. One intaglio plate number preceded by the letter ‘B,’ printed in black, appears on the selvage peel-off strip.
The Pine Cone was also offered to collectors in strips, or coils, of 18. These coil stamps were printed from intaglio printing plates containing 216 subjects. One intaglio plate number preceded by the letter ‘B,’ printed in green, appears below and to the left of the design on every 18th stamp.
First discovered by David Douglas in 1826 in eastern Washington, the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) is native throughout western North America. It has a broadly columnar form when young and develops a rounded crown with age. Cones are 3 to 6 inches long, red-brown in color, and mature in August and September. Its habitat is southeast British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon east of the Cascade Range, northeast California, northwestern Nevada, Idaho, and western Montana.