N.Y. Firm Markets Stamps To The World - And Pop Culture

NEW YORK - The offices are nondescript. The name suggests dusty bureaucracy.

But inside the Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corp. (IGPC), pop culture is the product.

On postage stamps.

This outfit has revolutionized the stamp world by splashing pop-culture icons on stamps in dozens of countries.

Football legend Joe Montana and baseball's Nolan Ryan. Ronald Reagan on horseback and Elvis Presley in concert. Mickey Mouse dressed as Christopher Columbus, and the crew of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise.

With IGPC's guidance, the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan has gone from Lenin to (John) Lennon - issuing a stamp in 1995 marking the 15th anniversary of the ex-Beatle's murder.

Last year, letter writers could give Rocky Balboa a licking. Five countries issued IGPC-created stamps marking the 20th anniversary of Sylvester Stallone's first movie about the fictional boxer.

The Manhattan company's 80-plus clients include small countries in Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific islands, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, as well as larger clients such as Ukraine. The company, which also consults to national postal services, is negotiating to run stamp programs in Russia and the Philippines.

Though most of IGPC's stamps feature the traditional dead presidents, flags and flowers, it's the pop-themed creations that attract the most attention, particularly from collectors.

Philatelic insiders credit IGPC's 58-year-old president, Sam Malamud, with inventing pop stamps. And they say his efforts helped push the staid U.S. Postal Service in the same direction. The result: hundreds of millions of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean stamps sold by the USPS in recent years.

"Sam has done probably more than anybody else to reach out to new constituencies of stamp collectors," says Michael Laurence, editor and publisher of Linn's Stamp News, a weekly newspaper in Sidney, Ohio, that covers the hobby.

"The stereotypical reader of Linn's Stamp News is a 60-year-old man with his tweezers and his magnifying glass," Laurence says. "But the Post Office has now embraced Bugs Bunny. It's a whole new approach to the stamp hobby.

"You can only put George Washington on so many stamps."

Any stamp saved by a collector and never used to mail a letter represents pure profit for a postal service. So for many IGPC clients, Laurence says, pop-culture stamps are an important source of revenue and a way to establish themselves in the world marketplace.

Last month, when the African nation of Gambia unveiled a set of IGPC-designed stamps honoring action-movie star Jackie Chan at a Hong Kong stamp show, the event made headlines.

During an interview in IGPC's offices, Sam Malamud's son, 27-year-old Moshe, plays a videotape of a Hong Kong news report about the stamps, which included a world map pointing out Gambia.

"That's exactly the kind of public relations you can't buy," says the younger Malamud, who oversees IGPC's international operations. "It might sound funny, but a lot of countries attribute a lot of their tourism to our stamps."

Leo Roberts is postmaster general of the Caribbean island of Grenada, an IGPC client for 25 years. He agrees that pop stamps act as "paper ambassadors."

"You get a lot of publicity, in that stamp collectors throughout the world will know there is a country called Grenada," says Roberts, whose country has issued stamps of Stallone, President Reagan (who ordered the 1983 U.S. invasion of the island) and Caribbean music stars.

Sam Malamud, who helped start IGPC in the late 1950s with a single African client, first married pop culture and postage in 1979 when he struck a deal with the Walt Disney Co. to put Mickey Mouse on stamps linked to the United Nations' International Year of the Child.

There has been resistance to pop stamps from the start, Moshe Malamud acknowledges: "Stamps were reserved for dead presidents."

And the charms of a world united by Elvis and "Star Trek" stamps continue to be lost on some. The New York Times has called the company's work "postal imperialism."

Laurence, who counts IGPC as a major advertising client, says the countries are willing customers.

"This is as voluntary a set of transactions as possible," he says.