I have some FC stamps stowed away in my desk that I just found. I’m not sure how old they are and I’m sure the price of postage has gone up a few times since I purchased them.
They don’t have a value or date or anything else on them on them other than the words “First-Class” and “USA”.
So are they good forever?
Not specifically although you might get letters through with them if you wanted to take a risk. All modern postage stamps have a certain value and they are good forever but only at that value. Transitional stamps are often made whenever there is an upcoming rate increase. They won’t have the value printed on it but it is still there. You would likely have to combine them with other low value stamps to get at least to the current rate to make things legit.
If you can find the stamp online, that would likely tell you the face value of each one. The post office can probably tell you as well.
Or, you could just stick a ton of them on your mail if you know the approximate value and have a good idea of how to make them go over the current rates.
The stamp is only good for the amount of postage it was purchased for. If you have an old 14-cent first class stamp, it’s not enough to send a letter by itself; additional postage is needed to bring it up to 39 cents.
Now, some stamps were printed with letters, not values, to be used when the PO raised its rates but didn’t have enough new stamps to go around. A post office might not recognize exactly what a stamp with just a letter is (I once tried to use one, and they spent some time looking it up for me). They may be willing to let them pass, or just not bother to go to the trouble, but legally, they are not sufficient postage by themselves.
I know of only one case where the PO is willing to accept postage for less than the required amount: SASEs for stories submitted to magazines that are on the editor’s desk when the postage went up. I always get these, even if the postage had gone up.
Hopefully this insanely long URL works…
It should bring you to a page describing “nondenominated” stamps. These are stamps that were printed for a rate increase before they knew what the rate would be. They’ve also got pictures of the nondenomination stamps over the years.
As others have said, the non-denominated stamps aren’t good for first-class postage indefinitely in the US. However, a member of the Postal Rate Commission wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times in November suggesting that they should be. In thirty countries, including Britain, Israel and Brazil, a first-class stamp purchased today can always be used for sending the first ounce of a first-class letter (the article calls them “forever stamps”). She suggested that the USPS do the same thing.
British friends have mentioned that whenever there is serious talk of a Royal Mail postage increase, they ‘stock up’ on stamps, buying a bunch at the current rate, which are still good after the rate goes up.
They mentioned that many people in the UK believe that whenever the Royal Mails need a quick injection of cash, they start a rumor of a rate increase, to get people to go out and buy stamps.
In countries like this, is it sensible for a person to buy extra stamps at old rate before it goes up? That’s effectively investing your cash into stamps, so it depends on the rate increase, the current interest rate, and how quickly you use stamps.
Here in the US, the recent postal increase was 5.4%. That’s a better rate than the current annual percentage paid by most bank savings accounts, so it would have been worthwhile buying a year’s worth of stamps at the old rate. (If the USPO used the “forever stamps” system, of course.)
Not true.
The non-denom stamps are worth their face value indefinitely. Whether or not a stamp’s face value is the same as the current first class letter rate is a different issue.
You wouldn’t expect to get away with mailing a letter today with only a 29¢ stamp from 1991, would you? Why should you expect to be able to do the same just because the stamp is labeled “F” instead of 29¢?
This is what I meant, although I phrased it poorly.
Thanks! It looks like I need to find some things to mail…
Not about stamps, but if you ever get one of these crazy long urls that have a tendency to break, you can use a free service called tiny url that converts these into a much smaller one. It can be very helpful when sending links.
If the stamp says “First Class,” I would expect to be able to mail a First Class letter with it, and quite reasonably, in my opinion.
The mere fact that it takes postal employees a few minutes to look up in a table how much the “F” stamps (or, recently, how much the “First Class” stamps with certain pictures on them) are worth is enough reason to abolish the idiotic system of having a stamp with a particular dollar value that’s not printed on it anywhere.
Of course I would. If the post office has had my $0.29 since 1991 and invested it wisely AND improved operational efficiency, they should profit quite handsomely.
All of the “non-letter” undenominated 1[sup]st[/sup] class stamps I’ve seen have the year on them in really tiny print down in one corner. Which of those stamps from the insanely-long-url page are your stamps?
Hot off the presses…
The USPS is proposing a “forever” postage stamp that will always be valid for the basic first class letter rate, regardless of price increases.
Of course, there’s always a gotcha. Along with the proposal to introduce the “forever” stamps, they reveal a plan to raise the letter rate to 42¢ next year.