A definitive stamp is a postage stamp that is part of a regular issue of a country's stamps (often referred to as a "regular issue") available for sale by the postal service for an extended period of time. The term is used in contrast with a "provisional stamp", one that is issued for a temporary period until regular stamps are available, or a "commemorative stamp", a stamp "issued to honor a person or mark a special event" available only for a limited time. Commonly a definitive issue or series includes stamps in a range of denominations sufficient to cover many or all postal rates usefully. (An "issue" generally means a set that is put on sale all at the same time, while a "series" is spread out over several years, but the terms are not precise.)
Read more about Definitive Stamp: Range, Frequency of Issue, Collecting, Notable Definitive Stamp Series
Famous quotes containing the words definitive and/or stamp:
“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)