Obligatory: this was yesterday (1/20/24)
In the US 1/20/24 was the last day to buy stamps at the old postage rate. The flat rate for postcards was 51 cents and was going up to 53 cents the next day.
They have a concept called forever stamps for regular letters and a similar thing for postcards. If you buy them today at today’s price, you can use them at any time in the future regardless of price increases. So if you’ll mail letters or postcards, they’re a good deal and future investment.
So anyways we ran to the post office at 4pm. The office was closed except for the self service machine. We need about 90 postcard stamps so I figured I’d get 100 to have some extras for the future.
I was so excited to see postcard stamps for 51 cents. I took a picture: https://i.imgur.com/M997Nfg.jpeg
So we bought 100, which happened to be the most we can buy at once.
At that point the machine began printing 100 individual 51 cents stamps.
Now you may have noticed the issue: it wasn’t 100 postcard stamps, but rather 100 stamps each saying 51 cents of value.
It took a long time as each stamp was printed one by one, but I got to stand there sad as I didn’t get my forever postcard stamps.
Now to mail my postcards, I’ll need to buy 2 cents of postage each (or more when it goes up again). I’ll be more careful next time.
Tldr: I bought 51 cent stamps instead of postcard stamps for 51 cents.
Edit: commented with an update after a few days.
Interesting update.
I went to the post office and asked about trading them in or something. They told me that they’re good for postcards forever.
Each printed stamp has the print date on it. He said that they honor the value on the date it was printed. So because it was 51 cents and that would mail a postcard on the print date, they would be honored to mail a postcard just like a postcard stamp: forever.
I’m honestly surprised. I asked if he was sure, he said 100% and pointed to his post office uniform.
Hopefully they work lol. If they do: I learned something.
Final update. We tried to mail the postcards today and were told the other person was incorrect and the stamps were not enough postage. They said if it has the date and price, that’s the value. They asked a supervisor and he said to take them anyways with the value we had on them.
They said they’ll probably (99%) send anyways and took them. I guess if we get postage due I’ll report back.