*major* Canada Post News (Dec 11/13)

Criminy. With no warning????? I was just about to order quarterly packs from past several years!! Grrrrrrrr .. . guess I will give up modern Canada. So so awful ... and sad .. and frustrating. Ugh.

Makes life interesting, for sure.

Maybe they will re-release them at a higher price when and If the rates go up?

Perhaps you are correct Puzzler. While Canada Post is now listing all the quarterly packs as "this item is no longer available for sale", the two quarterly packs that I put into my shopping cart a week ago (Oct-Dec 2007 & Oct-Dec 2008) are listed as "the two products in your cart are currently unavailable." Hopefully all the quarterly packs will become available again, albeit at a higher cost.

It means over 5 years they will be getting rid of home delivery and switching everyone to community mailboxes.

Has anyone checked their local post offices on the availability of the quarter packs and permanent stamps? I will check at lunch hour today and report my findings.

Obviously I'm not from Canada, but there are news reports that Costco and some pharmacies that sell postage stamps still have some Permanent stamps, although people who find them are buying them out in large quantities.

I'm just back from visiting some post offices in my area.

One outlet still has their entire stock of Permanent(tm) stamps on display and for sale (at a Shoppers drug store). All other outlets made it quite clear that there was a recall of everything yesterday and attempting to sell any would be "very, very bad".

There are places that are not a full postal outlet ("agent") but do sell only stamps. These places (such as Staples, Costco, etc.) most likely have a small stock of Permanent stamps (as did the one place I was at this morning).

I was able to get a couple of each of this year's quarterly packs, at the one outlet that was still selling Permanents.

By the way, it was very "odd" to see post office peg boards and counter display cases empty of all stamps. Very "eerie".

Here's an interesting idea: Save your receipt for those "Permanent" stamps. If the date on the receipt is after the "recall" of the "Permanent" stamps, even if from a retail outlet other than Canada Post, you may very well have a future collectible in your hands!

Wow this has to be the strangest thing I have ever seen come out of Canada Post!

I wonder if they may even put a cap on the face value of the Permanent stamps, perhaps at 63c, or even invalidate them.

I too have been thinking of the future face value of Permanent(tm) stamps come April 1st...

If Canada Post was going to 'cap' the price of the existing P's at 63c, why the urgency to pull everything that is out there? They could continue to sell their current stock at 63c and have posters hanging in the post offices that say "any stamp like this is worth 63c".

However, if they are pulling everything, that implies that the P's will continue to be worth the first-class rate no matter what that rate happens to be (i.e. they will increase from 63c to 85c). In which case, you do *not* want people buying and hoarding large quantities in anticipation of a 23-cent increase.

Very interesting.

I just found out my local Safeway and Save-On-Foods stores have quite a few Permanent booklets for sale. One woman at Save-On-Foods told me they are not under the rules of the Canada Post, they get there stamps at face value just as a convenience for customers.

I do remember reading somewhere when the Permanent stamps first came out, Canada Post listed "fine print" rights of termination of the P stamps without notice, or something like that.

Here is the news about the permanent stamps on CBC:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitch...ps-1.2461524

Canada Post says "the sale of new permanent or 'P' stamps will be suspended until the transition is successfully completed."

So they *may* come back on sale?

There demise is near. RIP CP

Thank you to the posters who reported the availability of P stamps at various locations. I visited my local agent ( Shoppers) and discovered a full range of "P" stamps as well as the Collector packs. The instructions regarding the sale of "P" stamps was not made clear to them.
This is a very bizarre scenario.

The 2013 Christmas "P" booklet stamp will be good to have on cover.

Edit :

When I wrote this I did not realize that the Christmas stamp was denominated 63 cents. Nothing special about its usage on cover. However the newly denominated flag and baby wildlife 63 cent stamps will have a short in-period time of usage - 3 1/2 months.

Certainly if the 'P' stamps don't return they instantly become a 'dead country-like' collectible with a clear beginning and end. This is very interesting to say the least!