On January 25, a stamp dedicated to mailboxes was put into postal circulation in the framework of the Joint Issue of the Communications Administrations of the RCC Member Countries

A mailbox is a box designated to collect or deliver postal correspondence (letters, postcards, etc.).

Mailboxes for the first time appeared in the Russian Empire on the streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1848. In Moscow, mailboxes were introduced on November 1 of 1848 by the order of the Postal Department. The early mailboxes were wooden and massive, but they were soon replaced by metal structures with a stylized image of an envelope.

In total, mailboxes in the USSR in the second half of the 1960s numbered about half a million. In the 1970s and 1980s, mailboxes of two colors were installed in large cities: a blue-colored box for out-of-town correspondence (long-distance correspondence) and a red-colored box for in-town correspondence. Sometimes the mailboxes were labelled "For out-of-town letters" and "For in-town letters", respectively.

Nowadays, mailboxes are small and lightweight, made of sheet metal, simple and economical to produce. Three colors denote different types of correspondence: the boxes of the traditional blue color are for sending letters throughout Russia, the boxes of the red color are intended for correspondence within the city, and yellow boxes are for the first class express mail. Mailboxes bear the official logo with the symbol of JSC Russian Post.

The stamp features three mailboxes: a mailbox of the second half of the 19th century, a mailbox of the first half of the 20th century and a modern mailbox, as well as the RCC logo.

In addition to the issue of the postage stamp, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Penza, Petrozavodsk and Samara, as well as a maxi-card.


Design Artist: S. Kapranov.
Face value: 29 rubles.
Stamp size: 30×42 mm, sheet size: 170×150 mm.
Emission form: a sheet with formatted margins with 15 (5×3) stamps.
Quantity: 120 thousand stamps (8 thousand sheets).

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