Vintage Seed Packets Springtime Giveaway

VintageSeedPackets-Forever-Booklet20-v2Flowers are among the most popular subjects on U.S. postage stamps. On Friday, April 5, the U.S. Postal Service will once again celebrate the beauty of American flowers with the issuance of ten stamps featuring illustrations from colorful antique seed packets printed between 1910 and 1920. To create the stamps, art director Antonio Alcalá used photographs of actual seed packets, which he cropped to highlight the beautiful floral detail.

Since today is the first day of spring, we thought we’d celebrate with a warm weather giveaway—one of the actual seed packets used to create the stamps!

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The front of the seed packet depicts the pale pink, subtle yellow, and muted orange-red flowers of the zinnia. The back of the packet describes the zinnia in more detail:

The colors run through all the shades of carmine, lilac, scarlet, purple crimson, yellow, to pure white.

A very showy plant, with large, double flowers which when fully expanded form hemispherical heads, become densely imbricated, and might easily be mistaken for Dwarf Dahlias. If any single blossoms appear they should be pulled up.

To win the zinnias seed packet, all you have to do is answer one question: Are zinnias annuals or perennials?

Email your answer, along with your name and address, to uspsstamps [at] gmail [dot] com. One winner will be selected at random. The deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. EDT, Friday, March 22. (NOTE: The zinnias seed packet is empty; no seeds are included.)

If you don’t win this time, you will have seven more chances to win. That’s right. We’re giving away a total of eight packets used in the creation of the Vintage Seed Packets stamps! Check back next week for another chance to win.

All ten of the Vintage Seed Packets stamps depict the rich and detailed illustrations that encouraged millions of Americans at the turn of the last century to dream of creating the perfect garden. They are being issued as Forever® stamps. (Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.)