STAMPS ARE OUT
Some of my friends and relatives are extremely cheap. I know two people who reuse dental floss. I’m not like that, but the one thing I do like to save money on is postage stamps. I won’t use two first-class stamps on a two-ounce letter. I go with one first-class, 73-cent ‘forever’ stamp, plus one “additional-ounce” forever stamp, 24 cents.
I’m a former philatelist. I have a U.N. souvenir sheet from 1965. United Nations stamps were a hot item back then. I got the souvenir sheet as a gift for my Confirmation. It cost my parents $75 ($749 in today’s dollars). The sheet is worthless now. U.N. stamps tanked just like the org.
I made a trip to the P.O. to buy “additional ounce” stamps. Also, I decided to get some extra 2-centers, too. Yes, I use Quickbooks and Venmo, but I use the USPS as well. The P.O. clerk handed me the 2-centers and informed me she had no “additional ounce” stamps.
“Do you sell milk?” I said. “This is a post office. You sell stamps! You don’t have stamps? Where can I get the stamps?”
She said try another branch.
I left. I’m not doing any more runs to the P.O. for “additional ounce” stamps. I’ll simply put two first-class stamps on two-ounce mail from now. So it’ll cost me an extra 49 cents each time. (Maybe my son Ted will get me some additional-ounce stamps if he reads this.) I’ll be spending about $10 more per year by not using the additional-ounce stamp.
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By the way, I didn’t say “Do you sell milk?” at the P.O. I dreamt up that retort in the P.O. parking lot, post-visit. But the dialogue looks good here, in writing, so pretend I said it.
3 comments
A few Cleveland Hts. Historical Society mailings ago someone finally mentioned to be about the cheaper extra stamps (I didn’t recall hearing about it before). Several Post Offices did not have it. The someone on the phone at one P.O. Told me they did, but when I went there it was false information. I think I finally got them but it’s probably not worth it if I have to go to more than one or two P.O.’s and that’s when I’m already going there.
In Japan stamps for letters and packages have been obsolete for years. They weigh what you give them, the charge appears on a screen and, if you are sending something abroad, a machine prints out an airmail sticker and the clerk pastes it on. You pay and, after getting your receipt, leave. Gone in 60 seconds.
From a friend of mine . . .
UN stamps seemed like a shuck to me. Like you could only send letters from their tri-parte locations in NYC, Brussels & Geneva. I went to the NYC UN shop to buy or send a couple times as a kid. A few years ago I tried again. Due to a contentious meeting-in-session, cops had total access to the NYC UN building blocked off to sight seekers and stamp buyers. I’ve got that 1965 XXth Anniversary Souvenir Sheet you reference. The visual aesthetic of UN stamps looks lame to me now. Too many goofy/childish motifs.
This is in contradistinction to my more recent Netherlands collection of which I have 5 chronological albums. Snappy, smart, cutting edge design and concept in newer issues. Au courant as much as a postage stamp can be.
But like you, I am mostly a former philatelist. Each Christmas I would get a fat stamp packet my parents purchased from Gimbels, a once grand NYC department store. Do you still have your U.S. stamp collection? I do. But I wonder if I should decommission mine. I hear tell that uncancelled stamps are worth less than face value. And it takes a slew of 2¢ and 3¢ postage to get up to the current rate of over a quarter of a dollar.
Every other boy in the neighborhood collected stamps. So straight arrow and boy scout!
Now it’s the strictly diminishing domain of cranky oldsters. This begs the question: What about that album of Roosevelt Dimes?
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