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After 111 Years, Postage Stamps Go Private: Bureau of Engraving Prints Its Last Rolls (Bill McAllister, June 13, 2005, The Washington Post)

The federal government printed its last postage stamps Friday.

The end to 111 years of stamp production by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) came without any public ceremony in the same 14th Street building where many of the nation's most famous stamps have been printed.

Workers pulled a final roll of 37-cent flag stamps from an aging, four-color Andreotti press on the fourth floor. That simple act terminated a once-thriving business that the Treasury Department agency had monopolized for decades.

Now, private printers will produce all the nation's stamps, a decision that U.S. Postal Service officials say will save tens of millions of dollars a year. [...]

Finances and what BEP Director Thomas A. Ferguson said was a decision to no longer treat stamps like currency led postal officials away from the hand-engraved stamps that were the bureau's hallmark and toward cheaper, lithographed stamps. In the end, the bureau, with its elaborate security system, unionized printers and large government payroll, declared it could not compete with private printers.