Hello everyone,
I’m on vacation in Lemnos and in the souvenir shops they have only one kind of international stamps, so my husband went to the post office for more variety - among the ones he bought that are clearly marked for international postage, he was sold a couple of animal stamps with no written value. When I looked them up on ELTA’s website, it seems they’re only good for domestic mail.
Could anyone confirm if this is really the case or can I at least use the cats if I add 0,10 more cents? Thank you for any information on the matter.
From looking at ELTA’s website, the cat stamps are apparently the same as “forever” stamps, and so they are currently good for .90 Euro’s worth of postage. From what I can tell, but I’m not sure, the international rate to send a postcard from Greece is one Euro, so I imagine you could just add a .10 Euro stamp to one cat stamp to send an international card from Greece. (But again, I’m not sure).
Based on this document below which is the current price list of the greek post office, you need a postage of 1 euro to send a card abroad. (B’ Προτεραιότητα - 2nd Priority 20g)
The cat stamps state indeed that they are good for “domestic mail (2nd Priority)” i.e postcards to Greece (90 cents).
The dog stamps state that they are good for registered mail (2nd Priority) to Greece (3.40 euros).
This makes sense because it gives a total value for the set of 3.40+0.90 = 4.40 euros!
So @jeffbh is correct. For every card you want to send abroad, you need a cat stamp and an additional 10 cent stamp.
Sorry for the confusion.
Tell your husband that if he goes again to the post office he can ask for a variety… 5 cent samps - 10 cent stamps - 20 cent stamps. They should have small values
Thank you both! That’s what I wanted to confirm - that the cat stamps (since I have a lot of those) can be used for international mail with an additional 0,10 stamp, so they won’t go to waste. The dog one, I guess, would be useless since it’s for registered mail, but I only have four of them.
The dog stamp is not useless. It’s worth 3.40 euros and you don’t have to use it only for the purpose it mentions (registered mail inland).
You can use it for its actual value.
For example,
for 4.00 euros you can send a 250g letter abroad with 2nd priority.
for 7.50 euros you can send a 500g letter abroad with 2nd priority.
Or you can combine it with the cat and send a nice card to yourself.
To anyone who might be reading this post seeking information on Greek stamps, the Hellenic Post Office has raised the price of postcards from 1 to 2 euros worldwide, starting from today, 27 July 2023.
