page_title: Alexandria "Blue Boy" Postmaster's Provisional
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandria "Blue Boy" Postmaster's Provisional / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Alexandria Postmaster Provisional stamp, type II
context_page_description: The Alexandria "Blue Boy" is a very rare stamp. It takes its name from the feature that makes it unique: its color. One of the few surviving stamps from a rare issue—the Postmaster's Provisionals produced in Alexandria, D.C., beginning in 1846, only seven of which are known—the Blue Boy is the sole example printed on blue paper. Postally used, the Blue Boy remains affixed to its original envelope, which last sold in 2019 and still holds the record for the highest priced cover of United States philately.
context_section_description: The Alexandria provisionals were produced under the auspices of the city's postmaster, Daniel Bryan. While just who supplied the stamps is undocumented, experts think it likely that they were fashioned with the equipment of a newspaper down the street from the post office, the Alexandria Gazette, published by Edgar Snowden. The provisionals were printed in pairs from a typeset form that produced two not-quite-identical images, classified by philatelic experts as Type I and Type II.  The Blue Boy is one of the four surviving Type I stamps; only three Type II examples are known. Both types conform to same general circular design, which presents an outer rim of rosettes surrounding a smaller ring of text:  "ALEXANDRIA "* POST OFFICE. *"; and, at the stamp’s center, the horizontal word "PAID" with the numeral "5" below it.  However, while Type I has forty rosettes, only thirty-nine appear on Type II—which, moreover, differs from Type I in its spacing of letters and asterisks. The provisionals' two-at-a-time production indicates that at least one Type II Blue Boy must have once existed.
caption: Type II (39 rosettes instead of the 40 on the "Blue Boy").
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