alanj@shark.UUCP (Alan Jeddeloh) (10/01/84)
x The 4 cent Project Mercury and 4 cent First Automated Post Office stamps, if mint, with original gum, not hinged, nicely centered and no other flaws, are worth about four cents each. Five of them will mail a letter. Used, they are worth about $3.50/1000. If you were to go to a stamp shop and by a copy of either you would pay between twenty and fifty cents, but you're paying the shop's overhead, inventory, dealer profit, etc. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of American postage stamps issued since the late thirties are worth just about face value. While there are exceptions, the above is a farly good rule of thumb. The reason is that the Post Office/USPS is dedicated to filling all the demand there might be for any given issue, combined with thousands of people who buy and stash away sheet upon sheet for "a raining day", under the mistaken impression that the stamps will be valuable some day. This implession, of course, creates even more demand that the USPS is happy to fill! Speculators buy *pads* of stamps (100 sheets!) direct from the philatelic sales unit of the USPS, go through them looking for errors (mis-perforations, missing or shifted colors, etc) and dump the rest.This has been going on for many, many years. The result is that stamp dealers and some mailers can and do regularly buy mint postage at *below* face value! The following adds are typical (from the June 11 "Lynns Stamp News, page 84): "BUYING ... mint sheets at 93% face ..." "DISCOUNT POSTAGE wanted 20 cent 93% 1 cent to $9.35, 85%" ($9.35 is the USPS overnight express rate, and yes, there is a stamp for it) "... full gum mint postage at 85% ..." "MINT POSTAGE full gum, paying 85% of face..." "MINT SHEETS: Paying 90% any quantity! " I regulary receive mail from stamp dealers with 40 year old stamps used for postage! -Alan Jeddeloh Engineering Computer Systems tektronix!tekecs!alanj@shark (503) 685-2882