Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek gets first-class tribute with U.S. Postal Service stamp

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek is being posthumously honoured with a U.S. postage stamp.

A sheet of stamps featuring the legendary quiz show host from Sudbury, Ont., was unveiled this week, timed for what would've been his 84th birthday.

It's designed to evoke the TV studio of Jeopardy! with an archival photograph of Trebek standing beside a wall of the game show's trademark screens, with headers that read "Entertainment," "Game Show Hosts," and "Famous Alexes."

Underneath each header is a row of stamps — resembling the show's famed blue screens — offering the same clue: "This naturalized U.S. citizen hosted the quiz show 'Jeopardy!' for 37 seasons."

The answer is written upside down across the bottom of the stamps: "Who is Alex Trebek?"

Biff Pilon is President of the Sudbury Stamp Club, and has about 50,000 stamps in his collection. He says this stamp is a great representation of Alex Trebek's tenure on Jeopardy! 

"[These stamps] are for anybody who is familiar with the show Jeopardy! and those of us who have a thirst for knowledge would know all about this show," he says. "This is a very good representation of who Alex Trebek was and what he meant to our evening television in 2024."

The United States Postal Service launched the stamp to honour the show's 60th anniversary during an event at the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, Calif.

For collecting purposes

Although stamps are rarely used anymore, other than to send the occasional letter, there seems to be more stamps than ever in circulation. 

Pilon says Canada Post isn't releasing new stamps necessarily for use as postage, but more for collecting purposes.

"They are hoping that there are still people collecting stamps out there who are interested in commemoratives and digital stamps," he says.

In today's digital world, stamps are becoming less valuable. Pilon says most stamps are only worth between five to 10 per cent of their original catalogue value, unless they're really old and in exceptional condition. 

"We've had people come to our stamp meetings and they have a whole box full of stamps that their father or their grandfather had," he says. "[They're] hoping to get a small fortune by selling them. And there's [just] not a big market."

Despite calling stamp collecting a "dying hobby," Pilon says he'll still probably buy the Alex Trebek stamps. 

"I probably would, just to say that I have a stamp put out by the U.S. Post Office that has something to do with the Sudbury native. We all watched him on Jeopardy for 37 years, and he was a very generous man and a philanthropist."