Making It Rain With Stamps

Letter - with the exception of some philatelic centers (when they still existed), PO's would not have open rolls of the large coils (and usually not of the rolls of 100 either).

Sorry letter, I just now figure out that I used a wrong number on the rolls. Yes, there are no 300 subject rolls. The actual rolls were 100, 500, 3000 and 10.000.
I also agree with eye. I had a good friend who back in the eighties worked at a small post office. Winston GA. They had some small industries in that town and she would order large rolls of stamps only if these companies requested them.


Peter

How did the post offices sell stamps if they didn't have the big coils? What did they pull the stamps from when people wanted two or seven or twelve? I assumed the coils were the simplest solution. Were they fiddling with booklets for every purchase? I've always been annoyed with stamp sheets and panes since coils are much easier and cleaner. It would suck to deal with three- or four-sided perfs every time a customer bought stamps.

I figured they had a snappy machine or manual dispenser that would cleanly cut off stamps down the center of the perforation. It's harder to imagine a simple machine for cutting out any number of stamps from a sheet. I don't remember what they did when I bought stamps as a kid though.

letter, have you ever been in a post office? Stamps usually come in sheets. Coils are printed as a convenience to the customer. The folks in the post office do not normally sell coil stamps other then complete coil rolls. Same goes for booklets.


Peter

At standard post offices, coils and booklets are NEVER broken by counter clerks for less than a full package sale. Only sheets are broken for low-quantity sales.
The philatelic window clerks could break coils for low-quantity sales, but they are few and far between these days.

One of my earliest, and fondest memories of the Post Office,
when I could get my nose over the counter.

To see the clerks, handle a bulging manila folder, full of sheets and part sheets of stamps, every value had its own section, then ripping the various values to suit the impost required.

Pressing the stamps, into the small glass bowl, with tatty damp sponge, applying the stamps to the envelope, and Bang! cancelling the stamps with the hammer.

I was full of wonder.

Back in the good ol' days, U.S. post offices often had vending machines where you could buy individual coil stamps, but the selection was very limited. The post offices around here got rid of those machines years ago.

rod222 described it well. If you wanted just the plate block, most clerks would manually detach it for you. During less busy times, some clerks would search through their folders to offer plate blocks of whatever material was present, which I think is how I learned postage dues existed.