Fun At The Post Office

it seems I love to lament about my Red Hook post office I went just now to get some 98 cent stamps for mail to international friends. The clerk scrambled all around and was able to fine ONE ! So I put that on on an envelope and said what else do you have ?? They have the Reagan forever stamp but that does not work out of the country..lucky I have a lot of lower denomination stamps from the last 45 years so I can make up the postage for letters to Canada, Australia. Israel etc !

Wow. That is sad.

It is pretty sad...i don't know who does the ordering or who they are thinking about...its not stamp collectors or patrons that send mail to Canada or Europe !!

This raises an interesting point. Is it being suggested that US Forever stamps cannot be used (along with whatever additional postage may be required) on mail being sent internationally? In fact, even other web sites have made that distinction.

I remember that used to be the case with the "A", "B", "C", etc., stamps because they were non-denominated postage not recognized by other countries. However, in the case of "Forever" stamps, the ruling must have changed based on the next to last bullet point on this USPS Announcement:

http://www.usps.com/communications/...mp_facts.htm

Have others tried this with success?

I've used Forever stamps overseas quite a bit and haven't had any problems.

I use the postage meter at work

i would have purchased the Reagan stamps except the clerk told me they were no good for going out of he country...i also had an enevelope I had sent to Canada and was never cancelled so I filled it up again and asked the clerk if she would stamp it...she noticed the computerized printing on the back and told me we had to scratch that out or it would come right back to me...so she saved me on that one..i know a lot of stuff gets through in the mail that should not..are we willing to take the chance ???

Philb: You can use the Reagan stamps for international mail as long as you have the correct total amount. I've been using the Year of the Rabbit and Kansas sorever stamps for a lot of International shipments. You need to educate your local clerk.

In Canada it is OK to use the personalized (like my avatar) stamps which are non-denominated and say Domestic Postage Paid as long as you add the remaining correct amount of make up postage or use more than one stamp. I have done this for years.

Same now with the new <P> Permanent stamps (same as Forever, just bilingual)

As the motto says on top of the web page Education is the Ke\y to Success.

Battlestamps..i will bypass the clerk and give it a try..i doubt some machine or quality control would pull it out of the mailstream !

I just read the wiki story on Red Hook,
I now have a new appreciation,
and respect for where you live Phil!
So you are a Brooklyn boy?

It is my understanding that "Forever" stamps have the value of the First Class domestic rate on the day of posting. So therefore, your Reagan stamps are worth $0.44 each towards the cost of International Letter Mail. It's true that they won't work alone to mail your letters overseas, which is where the confusion might come from.

If you have old postage -- and I'm sure many of us do! -- I wrote this little app to help with choosing the right denominations: http://mcgees.org/cgi-bin/denomination_counter.pl

It's not pretty (yet!) but it works. Just put in the denominations that you possess.

Rod, heres my history....i was born in Brooklyn..the story is before I started school I was hanging out in the schoolyard near our home and came home with language that made my parents hair stand on end...they moved me to Long Island..the suburbs...i was happy there..an 8 year old kid could wander far and wide as long as he was home for supper...then for reasons I will never understand my father moved us to the country 8 miles from anywhere..culture shock !! I grew up working on farms..built me up physically pretty good..when I married my wife we moved to the town of Red Hook...a one traffic light town...it sometimes gets confused with the Red Hook Section of Brooklyn a tough area near the docks !

Ah! I see.
thanks for the update :)

My Town does not have any traffic lights

It has a "ding ding" bell on the rail crossing.

I went to the city yesterday and spent 40 minutes
in nose to tail traffic on the "Freeway"?
City people are crazy.

Philb: Have you ever run into a former art teacher in Red Hook by the last name of Ham?