Coming as it is from a dog, that amendment is reassuring! 
In the US many of the odd denomination stamps are still lick, not peel.
If you routinely mail multi-ounce letters, which is to say about 5 pages or more, then you need the oddball stamps to pay for the second & subsequent ounce(s). Right now they’re 28 cents. And yes, they’re sold lickable, not peelable.
Wow, but that’s 2025! Amazingly, though, when I check out of the Jewel market near me, the cashier still asks, “Do you need any postage stamps?”
Stamps have become an extreme novelty for me as well. They go into the same category as physical cash and checks, neither of which I use with any frequency these days. When I do mail something, the package receives a rather boring postal sticker with the amount stamped on it. Also like others here, I have a full book of “forever” stamps still untouched in a drawer. I have no idea how long they have sat there dormant. I have no idea how much longer they will sit there dormant.
I actually miss stamps, the designs, the denominations, going to the post office and seeing the latest offerings. Sending letters in the mail seemed like monumental events, acts of faith that somehow the things would make it to their destinations. They didn’t always make it, but they usually did. Receiving an actual handwritten letter from a friend now would seem like a sumptuous luxury, something that someone would have to go well out of their way to do. Letters had an intimate personal touch that emails and texts will never reach. I’m lucky to even receive phone calls these days. Communication has devolved into one line squawks filled with typos from having to use minuscule keyboards. Stamps bring back “old-style” communication, which I’m probably over-romanticizing a little, but it really did seem far more personal. For those who never experienced it, it’s likely nothing lost. For those who did, only nostalgia remains.
Now he tells me!
I’ve made a point of mailing stuff to younger family members, cards, gifts, letters for no reason except to say hi, even when they live just across town. They like the novelty, though some raise an eyebrow in curiosity, and like the idea of an expression of interest and connection that is a little more permanent. Some write back, and one niece got me a selection of wax and stamps to seal letters, including instruction that one of the stamps was to be used only for letters to her.
I would hardly say typewriters are making a comeback, but there is some interest in them among younger generations and I think it speaks, in part, to a longing for more connection and communication than the digital age provides. It’s not an either or thing, any more than liking slow food means one doesn’t appreciate grabbing a bun on the run; it’s different, and for some, the difference is appealing and rich.
After I hit send, I am finishing off a letter to a colleague in Germany and will mail it this afternoon. Over 10 years, we’ve never had a letter go missing.
I, too, use stamps with some regularity. The folks who do my lawn, even though they are an actual company, don’t really have a way to easily pay online, so I mail them a check every month. We also still send physical birthday and Christmas cards.
I do miss the various designs on stamps. I suppose they still exist, if I were to bother to go to a post office and ask. These days, though, when I’m running low on stamps I just pick up a new book of 10 at the grocery store, which are invariably the generic Forever stamps with the flag on them. Functional but philatelically uninteresting.
I think I have one bill that I still pay with a check and mail with a stamp - the company that does our lawn treatment once a month. They hang the statement with an envelope in a baggie on the front door when they’re done. I don’t believe they have an electronic payment option.
Checks are another relic - I used to go through a book of checks per month back when I was regularly writing checks to pay bills and also to pay for groceries, etc. Now one book of checks can last a year! I had to order a new supply of checks a few years ago, I bought four boxes, and I suspect I may never have to reorder checks again.
They do. I always ask what they have in books of stamps; it varies. If you expand to sheets and odd sizes, the designs vary even more.
I go through about a book every couple of months.
You don’t have to go to the post office, you can look at all the designs, and buy them, online.
I got a fresh checking account ~18 months ago when I separated from now ex-wife. I ordered no checks at all. The bank branch can print checks for you on the spot, 3 to a sheet of fancy 8.5x11 security paper. They’re free too! W00t!
I asked for two sheets = 6 checks. I still have 5, and the 6th one was voided and mailed to some financial institution that was going to be direct-depositing funds to that account and did not trust their customers to provide accurate routing and account numbers. Idjits.
At that rate a single book of ~25 checks would be more than a lifetime supply for me.
I’m currently working my way through a roll of 100 Forever stamps which I suspect may last me the rest of my life. I use one stamp a month to mail in my HOA dues - I could pay them online but despite the fact that my HOA has yet to exhibit any of the horror story traits I’ve read about I don’t want to give them any direct access to my bank account. I occasionally need to mail something out (like some documentation when I was applying for my passport last year). Other than that I rarely need to mail anything.
I have accumulated a rather large assortment of older stamps. Some are at least 70 or 80 years old. I never paid more than face value for any of them and sometimes I paid less than face value. Because they are mostly in quite small denominations, the postage sometimes covers the entire face of the envelope with just a small space left for the address and return address. I have enough stamps now that sometimes I can put together different stamps with a common theme that matches the subject matter of the letter.
If you were someone who receives a big stack of letters every day, wouldn’t you look at the letter completely covered in stamps older than you are first?
The only drawback to all this is that it sometimes takes me 20 minutes to get a letter ready to mail.
This thread is reminding me that in a remote corner of my attic sits a large-ish box containing the stamp collection I put together from age ~8 to 13, which I haven’t even looked at in many years. It includes at least a few noteworthy stamps (e.g a Graf Zeppelin airmail stamp, issued in the early 1930s), but these are mostly in just average condition and no doubt not worth much.
I gather that stamp collecting is nearly dead - kids just don’t do this anymore, and adults who do are dying off. I’d guess it would be hard to even give mine away. Sad.
Back before the election my wife had volunteered to send out “Get Out The Vote” postcards to voters in a swing state. They sent us 200 blank postcards and a mailing list - we had to provide the postage. I was surprised at how much postcard postage was - fifty cents!
Pro tip - do not purchase 100 postcard stamps at the self service kiosk at the post office. I thought it would dispense a roll of stamps - silly me. Nope, it printed them. One. At. A. Time.
During Covid, I started buying stamps on-line. Now I’m on their mailing list ( 
) so I get a brochure about once a quarter. If I order a certain quantity, I don’t have to pay handling charges.
About 1/5 of the stamps need to be licked. They even have non-square stamps, which are scented!
I just mailed a mother’s day card to my mom and a postcard to a friend, whose birthday is around mother’s day. I sent 10 Christmas cards last year and got 8 back. I don’t buy too many stamps at a time because I don’t want to get stuck with a bunch of the wrong denomination. I still have a bunch of small denomination stamps leftover from the previous price change.
I don’t think I’ve ever lost a letter, or had one get lost on its way here. However, we did get a Thanksgiving card some weeks after receiving a Christmas card from the same person. No idea where the Thanksgiving card went, as the cancel date was before Thanksgiving. And we did get some letters quite late at the beginning of Covid, but that got sorted out.
The last time I “lost” a package was because the post delivered it wrong and the recipient was on vacation for 2 weeks. They delivered it when they got home.
Arriving home, today we got a snail-mailed invoice from the garage. We had picked up our car after hours, and it seems they waited until the end of the month to send out the invoice. It actually had a stamp on it.
That’s what “forever stamps” are for. You don’t get stuck with them because they’re automatically still valid for whatever class of mail they were good for when you bought them.
Is it really true that someone currently 13 to 19 years old has never seen a check?
I expect it depends a great deal on exactly which teenager you’re talking about.
I don’t regularly talk to any teenagers. Could anyone here who does ask them if they know what a check is? Could you ask them if they have ever seen one? Could you ask them if they have ever written one? Please note that I’m actually asking you to talk to some teenagers. Don’t just tell me what you intuitively think about this.