The U.S. Postal Service isn’t doing well financially and as the government moves to help with proposals such as removing Saturday delivery, the Director of Stamp Services has announced that living persons can now be featured on stamps. Previously only people dead for five years could be considered and until 2007 it was ten years. The exception to the rule was U.S. Presidents. They hope to have their first living person stamp in 2012 and are taking suggestions. They’ll also now look at those who died within the last five years. I’m thinking not of what I’d like to see on a stamp but what might bring in the most money from collectors around the world. Over 124 million Elvis stamps were collected. Perhaps what we really need is something equivalent to Pokemon cards.

Companies preparing to go public don’t always get the stock ticker symbol they’d like to. Zillow really wanted the letter Z and the Seattle Times found out how they got it. Single letter symbols aren’t easy to come by, not only because there are only 26 of them, but the New York Stock Exchange controls doling them out. Zillow had to employ clever tactics when they discovered the NYSE was reserving Z for another IPO (likely the games company Zynga). The NYSE, planning a merger with Deutsche Borse, would like to avoid any controversy with the SEC. Zillow used that to their advantage, arguing that holding the Z for a company that hadn’t even filed to go public yet was anti-competitive behavior. They got their Z without a big fight. The single letters left are: I, J, Q, U, and W.

In 2003 Congress established the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee to provide recommendations to the Secretary of the Treasury on the designs of circulated coins, national medals, and commemorative coins. Eleven committee members of different backgrounds, most of course with an interest or specialization in numismatics, serve four year terms. Seattle artist Heidi Wastweet currently fills the position of member “specially qualified in the medallic arts or sculpture.” Her expertise in bas relief sculpture has earned her numerous commissions for medals, plaques, tokens, and coins. Her hope for the CCAC and the future of American coins is that our currency is viewed as an art form, and that the the mint sculptors are treated as artists instead of worker bees in little cubicles at the mint. Her recommendations have included the addition of an art director and improved working environments for the in-house sculptors. Will the art of the coin become more revered as coin usage is gradually replaced by cards and electronic money exchange?

Early reports put this year’s September U.S. issue of Vogue at 584 ad pages, up from last year’s 532 pages. As an indicator of the economy, it’s a good recovery sign looking back to 2009’s 429 pages which was a huge drop from 2008’s 674. Since I’ve been tracking this data for several years now, I decided to do a very amateur analysis and made a simple chart comparing the ad pages in September to the Dow Jones Industrial Average in July of the same year. I picked July so that I would have a data point for 2011 (although the month isn’t over so it’s even sketchier!). A fancier graph would include more Dow data points in a year, but this is good enough for my little amusement. And I actually have 20 years of September Vogue issues, but I’m not up for counting all ad pages of the issues I don’t have data for! Anyway, there’s a good correlation when you put the DOW and page count numbers onto the same scale.

Nordstrom’s big Anniversary Sale is underway and the retailer has rolled out iPod Touch checkout devices to speed up (and encourage) purchases. Their system, spotted in the company’s hometown Seattle and Bellevue stores in April, appears to be similar to the one used in Apple Stores. The iPod Touch is backed by a Linea-Pro bar code reader and magnetic stripe swiper. Salespeople can also look up inventory without leaving the customer’s side. The Linea-Pro can print receipts via Bluetooth, but retailers may prefer to use the electronic receipt as an opportunity to get an email address into their customer database. I wonder if more theft will occur without that paper proof of purchase.

Vogue’s September 2010 issue weighs in at 532 ad pages, a 24%  increase, 726 pages total. Halle Berry is on the cover.  Glamour, another Condé Nast property, had a remarkable 57% ad page gain and they’re calling it their “biggest issue in 20 years.”  There will still be contenders in the inevitable move of magazine pages (I’m not talking about websites here) over to fully digital media, and they won’t have to worry about whether big totes are in style to contain their September issues.

It’s not open to the public, but employees and official visitors can enter a small museum at headquarters that houses “a remarkable collection of tools and artifacts used by the Secret Service and its foes.”  The archive includes many counterfeit $100 bills, weapons, and the window with a bullet hole from President Reagan’s limo.

Take a look inside San Francisco’s Old Mint which long ago housed 1/3 of the U.S. gold reserves.  There are photos of the “gas-powered lighting system, which called for one person to turn the wheel and another person to walk around the entire building, lighting each lamp”, the vaults, and details of the ornate doorknobs and railings.

The new $100 bill has its very own website and unveiling video (below).  You can also follow along on Facebook and Twitter (although I don’t think “like” and “follow” will pan out with any free samples or giveaways in this case).