Hey,
I recently wonder about the amount of stamps people use. I figured by now that people prefer to get more than one stamp if possible.
Today I saw a card in an envelope with stamps of an overvalue of 1,40 € and I wonder why people put so much stamps on a card/letter if it’s just a waste of money?
Do you do that? What are reasons for paying (in this case) more than double of the required fee for sending a postcard/letter?
No, I don’t do that. Postage is expensive enough in Austria, I don’t see why I should put more value on it. I often affix several stamps until I reach the value I need, but in future I will only buy stamps that have the exact value.
I usually put a $1 stamp and a forever stamp on international cards. It’s overpaying but I try to buy a variety because I know it’s fun to see different stamps 
I always use the exact port value.
I like to use several stamps for this.
And when I send an envelope that has a lot of space, I use invalid stamps as further decoration.
These don’t count towards the postage value, but they look nice. 
Sometimes I overpay a bit, e.g. when I use old stamps of 51 ct or 56 ct value. But only by one or two cents. If I know that person a bit more and have the perfect stamp match for the card, I might overpay a bit more.
well i definitely overbuy. i don’t overpay though. we have a lot of older stamps with different values so if i want i can put 3 or 4 different stamps to get to the €1.75 we have to pay for a stamp now.
only very sometimes i put on 2 national stamps, which makes me overpay by 43 cents. for example we have some beautiful space stamps since last year and i put them on a space card to a space lover. it just belonged together.
but i think 43 cents is a lot so that happens like 3 times a year.
I try not to overpay by more than five cents, but I often overpay slightly in order to add up to enough postage using stamps available at my local Post Office, without just using our famously boring international stamp. Every time postage rates increase, I hope there is still a reasonable way to do that.
I overpaid my last card by 0.15€, because it made sense in decoration and to the receiver’s liking. I think this was worth it, I may just eat some less chocolate or so in return and it was an exception. Besides I sent less cards this month so no problem.
The overpayment two cards before was by accident though 
. I’m so used to put 0.85€ and 0.10€ on my international cards, that when I actually used a 0.95€ stamp I added the 0.10€, too. I only realized it before tossing it in the mailbox, so too late. Well, mistakes happen 
No, I don’t. Postage is expensive here. I don’t even buy exact value stamps. I buy stamps with “Europe value” or “world value”. They are always worth the correct postage even if prices go up. It also means that there is only one stamp on my postcards. I try to buy nice ones though 
Sometimes I do this by a few cent. Like @Cassiopheia mentioned the old 0,51 € stamps.
But it doesn’t really matter as I buy those old (still valid!!) stamps a bit cheaper (like many other German Postcrossers).
Once I had to overpay an envelope with more than double of the needed postage. My former boss had to send out an urgent document but the only available stamp was a stamp for “Maxibrief” (and no, she didn’t want to open an account at Deutsche Post online shop where we simply could have bought the needed postage as “internet stamp”). But of course that didn’t bother me - it wasn’t my money.
Like others have said, I sometimes overpay when using older stamps with odd values or when I have a particular stamp that matches the card or the recipient’s interests.
Usually this is in the 0,01 - 0,15 EUR range though and only happens a hanful of times per year - basically nothing in comparison to the amount of cards I send!
Sometimes yes. At the current rate, I occasionally overpay by 2 cents
Our postage is 85¢.
1st local stamps are worth 52¢ at the moment.
If I use 1st local + 30+5¢/35¢ on the card, I’ll be overpaying
We no longer issue 1¢ stamps here so I can’t do exact.
For this reason I hardly use 1st local stamps on cards anymore, preferring instead to use value stamps like 20, 60¢ etc
Never on purpose. But I did today, on accident. I got distracted and added two 5.5 kr stamps instead of one 5.5 kr and one 2.5 kr… And I didn’t realise until after the card was written and it was too late to save it for a card going to the “World” (which is more expensive) instead of to “Europe”. It happens sometimes that I overpay by accident.
If the person likes to collect stamps, I’m willing to pay more to post better stamps. But most of the time I’m smart about postage. Airmail is expensive, so I try to post an accurate cost.
I certainly overbuy, I get a lot of stamps from ebay, of different values, and I built myself a little tool that will tell me which stamps to combine to get to the value I need. I do this because stamps with no face value are pretty new, and anyway the most common commemorative stamp is domestic, while the three international rates (Europe, Asia/Africa/America, Oceania) are pretty uncommon as commemoratives, and the forever stamp for Europe is the only one I find reliably in shops… so I combine stamps, and I have too many of them.
We always try to use the exact amount required for shipping. It is easiest to grab a single International Stamp for overseas cards & a single postcard stamp for domestic cards, however, we recognize that some folks make special requests in their profiles for a variety of stamps. For those reasons, we have the list below in stock.
xx Tara
No. I have ordered a bunch of 0.45 € and 0.51€ stamps, so that I will overpay international cards by 0.01€ then, but I do not really regard that as overpayment.
The most I’m willing to overpay would be 5 cents for a 92 cent (2 ounces/60 grams) stamp with a 68 cent domestic first class stamp; I have some cards with only room for two stamps. Previously, a $1 + domestic postcard stamp worked for this at a one-cent overpay.
On occasion you will see trade offers in the Forum where members are sending other member postcards with multiple commemorative stamps on them. Most often, the value of the stamps exceeds the rate to mail the card. But it is a nice collectible.
I have the same answer as everyone else, it seems - I try not to overpay if I can avoid it!
The maximum I’ll ever overpay is about $0.54 on a card to the USA. My stamp stash is currently low, so I don’t really have USA stamps (the rate is $1.30) or the right low value stamps to add to a domestic stamp (those are $0.92). I tend to use two domestic stamps, which works out to about $1.84.
The 54 cents feels like a lot if I think too hard about it, haha. But it’s still less than using an international ($2.71) or oversized ($1.94) rate on a postcard to the USA, so I guess that’s okay
