Monday, February 26, 2007

Forever Stamps

Will these be the investment of the future? I heard a mention on the radio this morning that the Post Office is looking into creating "forever stamps," which would keep a perpetual value of whatever the first class letter rate is, regardless of whether that rate goes up. No more buying 1, 2 or 3 cent stamps every time the postal rates increase! I thought the idea sounded a little weird and wondered how it would work. Here's a link to an article in the Washington Post that explains it a bit.
I'm not convinced that this will ever happen. I can see that the benefits of having cash in hand might somewhat offset the lack of sales later when people buy lots of the stamps and hoard them to hedge against future price increases, but would that really work? Would some kind of secondary market arise as people who had bought stamps tried to trade them with others for some price inbetween what they bought them at and the current rate from the Post Office? I'm sure there are other issues I'm not even thinking of...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the postal deliver personal did like the UPS there would be no need for increse of postage. The cost goes up because the reap much over time just goofing off on the route. I see them sitting in the local gas station, standing and talking with customers for at least a half hour, when they should be delivering the mail. so they then get back and demand over time. You don't see UPS sitting around they are on the move all the time.

Adam Nash said...

Funny you should catch this today. I had a post on this a while ago on my blog. It's actually pretty interesting to think about the new forever stamp as a form of inflation-protected security.

- Adam

mOOm said...

Didn't they used to have these? They had an "F" on the stamp. Why is everyone treating this as if it is a new idea? Why did they stop them before?

Anonymous said...

This was recently introduced here in Canada and it's working well so far. I so rarely use stamps that it doesn't even make sense for me to buy a 10pack since the stamps have eventually gone up in price before I finish one.

Dayngr said...

Very interesting... something to think about for sure. I buy stamps regularly so this would be amazing.

Anonymous said...

These were introduced in the UK in 1989 if I'm not mistaken and in France in 1993... it seems to be working just fine.