Do you ever overpay on postage to use cool stamps?

I do not for 2 reasons. Firstly stamps a very expensive. A stamp for outside Europe is € 2.05. (2.42 US $) Secondly, the Belgian Postal Services don’t have stamps with a certain value. You have stamps for Belgium, for Europe and for rest of the world. There is no value stated on the stamp, only the destination it is intented for.

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there is, you just have to look a bit harder and be a bit creative if you want. 4 times €0.39 for example. then you can use these beauty’s:

i think €1.55 is more than enough to pay for one stamp so i almost never use two domestic stamps. i only did i recently to a huge miffy fan, i just couldn’t not put the miffy stamps on that card.

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Actually, no, I don’t. Well, yesterday I overpaid by 1ct by accident, but that doesn’t count. :smiley:
I bought many old stamps from stamp vendors of prices that aren’t in use anymore. (national postcard atm is 60ct, national letter 80ct, int postcard 95ct. I have stamps with 45ct, 55ct, 56ct, 70ct…) So I can have topics that are new to Postcrossers since they haven’t been in use for some years. With our flower definitives it’s easy to reach the exact current rate. :slight_smile: And I love choosing stamps the recipient might like!

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I usually do. I keep a wide variety of stamps on hand, including older unused stamps from ebay. I try to match both card and stamps to the recipients interest.

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I do it about 50% of the times (I keep a record of all my sent cards.) The cost of sending cards from Lebanon is 1750 or 2500 LL (Depending on the zone). So there are times if I see the recipient likes stamps I put stamps that sum up to 3000-4000 LL.

I bought a whole bunch of 5 cent and 10 cent stamps, so I can make sure I have the right amount when I want to use some interesting 55 cent stamps.

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No, never. Postage is expensive as it is.

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Rarely but do. But just some little cts. For example, I have stamps with the old fire truck. It costs 1.39. I need for the most of European countries 1.35, but for some other- 1.42. If I need 1.35 but think- that receiver may like that fire truck- I put it on. But if I need 1.42, I maybe don’t have exactly 3 cents to add, I maybe have 4 or 7.

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I used to… like 10 years ago, because postage was cheap then. But now, I overpay if it’s just like Php 1-2, and it also depends on the receiver.

Sometimes I pay too much. Even sometimes I purposefully buy more expensive stamps, because they are more beautiful

You really haven’t had increases in postage since 2013? I am sincerely jealous - in September 2013 I`ve sent a postcard from Beirut with this stamp with a value of 1750 LL

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Coming back to the topic: of course, I never exceed the amount of the necessary postal fee - it is so high in Poland that sometimes I have to use 5 stamps, so stamp collectors should be satisfied anyway ;o)

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This particular stamp is missing from my collection unfortunately. I do have the rest. One in particular I use frequently too.

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When I use cooler stamps I use one regular forever stamp ($0.55) and two postcard stamps ($0.36). This adds up to just over the required postage. Or sometimes I use two forever stamps and one postcard stamp. I usually do this for stamp collectors. If you mention your a collector in your profile I try to mail you a few used stamps and use cool stamps for postage.

@ludek that sounds awful. We had a problem like this years ago (before I was born lol). They fixed by issuing forever stamps. The current rate for postage is $0.55. When rates go up, the stamps will worth whatever the new rates are. It’s the same with international. ($1.20)

We only have a few stamps like this, almost all are issued with a fixed rate.

I actually never had any trouble with getting the correct postage after our recent price raise using only 2 stamps. Still, it is a bit ridiculous to first change the postage rate and issue the correct value stamps more than 2 months later. If I recall correctly, they did the same with the previous rate change a few years ago, so I wasn’t surprised :wink:

I am in the Philippines and I have noticed that many people just pay what they like. I recd 4 USA cards this week, one with 36 cents, 1 with 1 forever stamp, 1 with 2 forever, and one with 3 forever . they all arrived fine

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Only recently I have overpaid on a few cards but only by a penny.

But other than that I haven’t overpaid since I first started postcrossing back in 2019 (even then it varied between 4p and 10p)

Now two domestic 1st class NVI stamps equal the international rate.
I used to notice in the post office the amount people who had overpaid with domestic stamps on their international letters.

I’ve also noticed how some countries have a beautiful selection of domestic stamps but hardly any interesting international stamps,
I like to think that here in the UK we are fortunate enough to have an even spread of Domestic and International themed special stamps.

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Very rarely. If I really really really want to match a stamp to a card within Germany, I might use an old 70-cent stamp even though the postage is 60 cents. For international cards, the postage is high enough that usually when I want to use a commemorative I have to use make-up stamps. Sometimes to save space I will pay a penny or two more in postage instead of trying to combine 3-, 2-, and 5-cent stamps to make it right (we have no current 1-Euro-cent stamps in Germany).

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Almost never. We already have high prices for sending cards/letters.
Furthermore these prices are calculated oddly - you pay 1,75€ for domestic postcard/letter up to 50gr and it is always priority. And you pay 1,75€ (economy) or 1,85€ (priority) up to 20gr for international shipping. We have domestic forever stamps (1,75€), international forever stamps (1,85€) and domestic Christmas forever stamps (1,2€)
Since I like more domestic stamps (there is a better variety of those) I just use them :slight_smile:
If the destination country is far away and I want my card to arrive faster - I use one domestic stamp + one 0,10ct stamp.
Luckily we still have an opportunity to buy stamps with price on it - 0,05ct, 0,10ct, 0,20ct, 0,50ct, 0,90ct etc. They are not so beautiful but I also use them if receiver wants “as many as possible”.
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I sometimes do, when I have one matching stamp that is too high of a value. Since I don’t have “high” value stamps it only happens for national mail. A current example would be the Die Sendung mit der Maus stamp which has a face value of 80 cents, national postcards only need 60 cents but I wanted to send some matching cards with it. And it’s still cheaper than one international postcard (95 cents).

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