Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, under circumstances still unexplained. This stamp was issued October 7, 1949, exactly one hundred years later to the day.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Catalog Number: Scott #986

• Denomination: 3 cents (3¢)

• Date of Issue: October 7, 1949

• Printing Method: Rotary Press, Engraved (Intaglio)

• Perforation: 10½ × 11

• Color: Bright Red Violet

• Subject: Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe above a shield bearing Pegasus

• Format: Commemorative single

CONDITION ANALYSIS (Seller-Assessed)

• Status: Used

• Grading: Very Fine

• Postmark: Partial black postmark clipping the upper-left corner and running down the left edge. 

• Obverse: The portrait, the text and denomination are all sharp and clearly identifiable.

• Reverse: No original gum present, as expected for a used stamp. The paper shows light toning and a few small foxing specks, with no tears or thinning visible.

• Centering / Margins: The design is well framed with a leftward shift.

• Perforations: Intact on all four sides.

HISTORY

Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at the age of forty, and the circumstances remain genuinely mysterious. He was found delirious on the city's streets four days earlier, wearing clothes that were not his own, and never recovered enough to explain what had happened. Theories have ranged from illness to a form of election-day fraud called cooping, in which victims were seized and forced to vote repeatedly, but no definitive explanation has ever been established.

The Post Office issued this centennial stamp on October 7, 1949, holding the first-day ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, where Poe spent much of his childhood. The engraved portrait sits above a small shield bearing Pegasus, the winged horse long associated with poetic inspiration and the emblem the Post Office used for poets in these designs. It suited the author of "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and the tales that shaped American Gothic and detective fiction.

The bright red violet color is typical of late-1940s commemoratives and has held its tone well. A century after his strange death, Poe had become respectable enough for the federal government to honor him on everyday mail, an outcome the perpetually broke and often dismissed writer might have found darkly funny.

STEVEN SAYS

The date coincidence still gets me. Poe dies October 7, 1849, and the government honors him October 7, 1949, to the exact day. For a man who wrote about the thin line between life and death, that is the kind of ending he might have written himself. Look for the little Pegasus under his collar, the poet's mark.