WORLD WAR I STAMPS

During WWI, the United States shipped lots of heavy machine parts to Russia.  These packages used a lot of postage, so demand for high denominations went way up.  By 1917, the last of the 1902-03 $2 and $5 stamps were gone and the Post Office needed stamps now.  They didn't have time to create stamps to match the current Washington/Franklin 3rd Bureau issue, so instead they used the 1903 designs.  In 1917, US stamps were perforated 10 instead of 12.  This change makes it easy to tell the 1903 stamps from the 1917 stamps…