New stamps honor Mother Teresa, Katharine Hepburn, Roy Rogers

By Ed O'Keefe

Images courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service

A Nobel Prize winner, several movie actors, the Vancouver Winter Olympics and Michigan's Mackinac Bridge will appear on new postage stamps in 2010, the Postal Service announced Wednesday.

The mail agency will honor Mother Teresa with a stamp starting on her birthday, Aug. 26. The Roman Catholic nun won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Generally postage honorees are U.S. citizens, but the agency occasionally honors people "who's work made an impression on American culture," said USPS spokesman Roy Betts.

"In the case of Mother Teresa, she is an Honorary American Citizen so that qualifies her," Betts said.

Several Hollywood icons will also appear on new stamps: Actress Katharine Hepburn appears on stamps starting May 12, and four "Cowboys of the Silver Screen" -- Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, William S. Hart and Tom Mix -- arrive at a post office near you on April 17.

Other honorees include singer Kate Smith (of "God Bless America" fame), cartoonist Bill Maudlin, artist Winslow Homer, Negro Leagues Baseball and a stamp honoring scouting to coincide with the Boy Scout's annual Jamboree in July.

The Postal Service will also for the first time issue a 64-cent stamp for oversized or odd-shaped greeting cards. Post offices will start selling the Monarch butterfly stamp on May 17.

Postage stamps generate between $250 million and $300 million in revenue each year, according to David Failor, the Postal Service's executive director of stamp services. The total cost to develop, design and produce commemorative stamps runs roughly $40,000. Though the Postal Service does not pay license fees for the images of a character or famous person, it does pay $5,000 to various artists that design and paint the stamp's image.

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