What Is Happening With The Price Of Modern (After 2016) US Stamps?

By the way, you can buy modern stamps for less than FV by getting them from business vendors – vendors that sell to businesses, who are not even thinking about the world of philately.

One such outfit: https://buydiscountstamps.com/

Never used them, but I've been aware of them for years. $500 minimum. Discount is about 10%. Good selection.

Is that like a legitimate outfit? Like if I bought 1000$ worth of forever stamps would they actually be real? The USPS is ok with companies like this?

"By the way, you can buy modern stamps for less than FV by getting them from business vendors – vendors that sell to businesses, who are not even thinking about the world of philately."

Just because they sell to businesses doesn't mean they know nothing about which stamp carry a premium and even if they are clueless, they have to source their stamps from someone and their source likely knows.

It is no different than buying a face lot at auction. Stamps, as with most things, have a secondary market. The USPS made their money when first sold. Why should they care?

Revisiting this thread after a year.

Now that the stimulus payments are over and there is record inflation and energy prices coupled with a declining stock market, has that dampened the high prices on modern stamps we anecdotally saw last year? Every single person is negatively affected by inflation.

I think it's very likely to be legitimate based on my digging a couple of years ago. Note that it's not unusual to be able to buy stamps below full price – I used to see slight discounts on rolls and books on eBay all the time. There are different reasons for this, different supply chains for discounted stamps, like businesses that have a surplus and need to unload them – they can't return them to the USPS after all.