BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Cleaning Cleaning out the desk drawer

Lisa what an incredible photo! It looks great. Do you think you can keep it this organised?

Also query for me (difficulties in translation between US and UK) - what are FOREVER STAMPS?

Yes I want to know the same question, what are forever stamps?

Well done on cleaning the draw!

Asha -

My hope is that now all the random junk is out of there that I'll have little opportunity to put new stuff into there. I guess we'll see!

In the US, regular correspondence-type letters in regular envelopes cost 44 cents right now. So if I wanted to mail letters to friends I'd have to get 44 cent stamps to stick on those envelopes. However let's say in 3 years the post office raises their rates to 45 cents a letter. Now I have all these 44 cent stamps lying around and have to buy 1 cent stamps to add on to my letters. It is a nightmare and it's why my drawer has all sorts of random stamps in it.

So what they did starting in 2007 is issue (in addition to other stamps) a new Forever stamp. This stamp is bought at the current rate. So if I buy it now it costs 44 cents each. But it is ALWAYS good for a regular letter. So in 3 years if the rates go up to 45 cents those stamps are now good for the 45 cents for a letter. I never have to worry about what the current rate is! I can just use a forever stamp and be done with it!

It makes my life so much easier, but I still have to do something with all these old stamps. It's such a hassle to piece them together on envelopes.

Lisa is this an investment opportunity? buy loads of stamps and sell them on in ten years time - could make your fortune! (that's presuming you haven't made it already...).

We have first and second class stamps in the UK and I've never had a problem if I've used old ones. The problem only comes if you uee a stamp that has a particular amount on it (in the UK it would normally be down to pence).

That is a brilliant idea, must inform the Post Office about this. They are always putting up the price of stamps in the UK with very little warning.

It's funny but I rarely use stamps any more, yet when I was younger I was always queuing up in the Post Office for stamps!

Maybe those that say 1st class and 2nd class are like forever stamps in the UK Asha?

Asha, I have considered that for a possible investment, but i never went so far as to actually buy enough stamps to do it.

I think the stamp price increase is slower than what you could get with a checking account interest rate, although I suppose it'd be worth investigating

Asha - when we buy a stamp it always has a value on it - with the exception of the new forever stamps. So before if the letter rate was 42 cents you would buy a stamp that said "42 cents" on it and use it for first class mail. Then when they raised the rate to 44 cents now you'd have to buy additional 2 cent stamps and on your letters put one 42 cent stamp plus one 2 cent stamp to add up to the new 44 cent total, to use up your remaining 42 cent stamps.

Lisa, i actually have a few old stamps that do not have a cent value on them. For those I have to actually take them to the post office and ask what they are worth. The postal people then have to go look it up - they don't remember either.

Oh right one or two christmas stamps were like that. They have specific values but its like a guessing game.

You can find out the value of those old stamps on the USPS website.