The 3¢ Georgia Bicentennial Postage Stamp
 Flat Plate - Perf 11 - 400 Subject Plates - First Day: Feb. 12, 1933 - 61,719,200 issued

As with the William Penn commemorative stamp of a year earlier, the General Oglethorpe stamp honored a "social experiment", a settlement with humanitarian goals in principal at least, to provide a new home for the disenfranchised in England's crowded debtors prisons. In practice, Oglethorpe's settlement was more a deliberate attempt to establish a dividing line between the British and Spanish occupation of North America. 

Oglethorpe landed in what is now Savannah, Georgia on February 12, 1733. As William Penn had done in his vision of the city of Philadelphia, Oglethorpe instituted a master plan for the city of Savannah, establishing an ingenious grid of squares, each surrounded by businesses, houses and churches, each a mini-community within the larger city. Today these "squares", each with its own personality, give Savannah its unique charm.

In a preemptive move, Oglethorpe built a military stronghold about sixty miles south of Savannah, at Fort Frederica. Attempts by the Spanish to unseat the English colonists were so unsuccessful that it is believed to have signaled the end of Spanish expansion north of Florida.

First Day sales in Savannah, Georgia were on the 200^th anniversary of Oglethorpe's landing, February 12, 1933 and a day later in Washington, D.C.

The 3¢ Washington's Headquarters at Newburgh, New York Postage Stamp
  Rotary Press - Perf 10½ x 11 - 400 Subjects - FDC: Apr. 19, 1933 - 73,382,400 issued

This stamp was the first issued under the administration of President Roosevelt, which began on March 4, 1933. Roosevelt was the first serious philatelist to become president and of course became involved with the issuance of stamps almost immediately upon taking office. 

In what, at the time, must have seemed like a promotional event, Roosevelt ordered the presses stopped and bought one of the sheets of 400, something that certainly would seem to be a real shot in the arm for U.S. stamp collecting. What the Postmaster did not realize was that to philatelists this sheet, having not passed through the normal gumming and perforation stages of stamp production, was a very different animal than the normal gummed and perforated issues. There is some controversy regarding whether Roosevelt realized this distinction at the time. In retrospect it is hard to believe that a stamp collector would not realize the value of an exceptionally rare imperforate stamp, since in this case only Roosevelt's sheet existed.

The controversy surrounding this practice ultimately led to the issuance of special imperforate sheets in an effort to insure that any collector could obtain an identical sheet to the one which Roosevelt and a few selected others had received. These stamps came to be known as "Farley's Follies". See "The Farley's" for more on this subject.

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