How can people determine in advance whether their letter will require hand cancelling?
I can’t find any reference on the USPS site which says you need to pay extra far wax-sealed letters..
They don’t have to be hand-canceled, but you run the risk of the wax getting damaged by the machines.
Does the wax make the envelope heavier than one ounce (or whatever the limit is)?
Yeah, you’d probably prefer they hand-cancel rather than having your nice wax seal get destroyed in their machines.
It’s not the weight so much as the puck of wax potentially getting caught and jamming the machinery.
Most people that I know of sending wax sealed missives put the wax sealed envelope into a standard envelope and put the usual address & postage on the outter one. The inner envelope will arrive in good condition with a suitably decorative address and maybe some sort of artistically drawn cancellation.
I meant the postage would be higher because the weight would be (slightly) greater.
While we’re talking about seals: Aladine makes beautiful letter seals (ideal for your Hogwarts invitation).
If you first stamp the seal in some gold ink, you get a spectacular gold / wax seal - which is what I do for my fancy letters.
The one time I tried this, the seal still ended up in chunks at the bottom of the outer envelope. But I use the very brittle, glossy wax. Maybe I would have better luck with type that has a wick and seems to be a bit softer. Or I guess it could have just been bad luck.
Would you mind if I added that site to my unusual online vendors thread?
It would be better if you were to post it there since it’s your discovery and therefore you could give a better description of what they have, but I don’t mind doing it. 