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.
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.
Actually, no, I don’t. Well, yesterday I overpaid by 1ct by accident, but that doesn’t count.
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. And I love choosing stamps the recipient might like!
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.
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.
No, never. Postage is expensive as it is.
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.
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
.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)
This particular stamp is missing from my collection unfortunately. I do have the rest. One in particular I use frequently too.
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
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
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.
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).
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
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”.
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).