Ah… vintage postage. You are so beautiful but so misunderstood. I absolutely LOVE using vintage stamps. They add such a romantic touch to an envelope. Vintage postage is one of those things that a lot of couples want but aren’t exactly sure how it works or how much it can all end up costing. Believe it or not, vintage postage requires a lot of work and time to calculate, source, curate, and assemble onto your envelopes.
In today’s blog post, I want to explain a bit about what vintage stamps are, how they can be used for your wedding invitations, how they’re priced, and how we can control that cost a bit.
1.What is vintage postage?
First I want to explain a bit about what vintage stamps are. Once USPS issues stamps, they don’t expire, but they also don’t work the same as the Forever stamps that most of us are used to. Forever Stamps maintain their first-class postage rate even if that rate rises in the future, but vintage stamps don’t abide by the same rules. So any unused stamp can be used to mail letters but the trick is you need enough stamps to equal the current price of postage. That’s why you see people using SO MANY stamps on one envelope.
2. How do we incorporate them on wedding envelopes?
The thing I love the most about vintage stamps is that they act as a little hint to your guests about your wedding day, or even as a reflection of both of you! If you are an outdoorsy couple who met while skiing and you are getting married in California, we can curate stamps for you that will hit all those points! Vintage stamps can be a reflection of you, your relationship, and your wedding day.Another way to choose stamps is to think about your color palette. It’s a great way to elevate your entire wedding suite and the experience your guests will have when they receive and open your invitations.The real magic is when we combine both of those. Can you say HEART EYES?
3. How are they priced?
Vintage stamps sound great, huh? Why don’t we all use them all the time, then? Welllll, the thing is, when you purchase a vintage stamp, you are not paying its face value/marked denomination. The cost of a stamp depends on how rare it is, how popular it is, the markup the curator charges, etc. So even though the face value of a stamp may be 10 cents, you may be paying 80 cents for it. At the time of this blog post, the price of first-class stamp to mail a letter is 63 cents. Depending on how many stamps you use, it might cost $1 – $2 to actually mail a 63 cent letter. Now, multiply that by however many invitations you are sending, and it can cost you $200-$300 just to mail your invitations. You may have the budget for that which is great, but there is a way we can bring the cost down while still using vintage postage, which brings me to my next point:
4. How can we bring the cost down while still using vintage stamps?
There are two ways we can bring the cost down while still using those beautiful vintage stamps we all love! We can use higher-denomination vintage stamps so that fewer are required. The other option is to use one current USPS stamp and the rest can be vintage stamps. Let’s see an example:
You have an invitation suite that is 2oz. It costs 63 cents to mail 1oz letter, plus 24 cents for the extra ounce, so it costs a total of 87 cents. We can use a current USPS Forever stamp to cover the 63 cents, and then use vintage stamps to cover the 24 cents for that extra ounce.
There are a couple more things that go into how much it can cost to mail wedding invitations like size, thickness, etc but we’ll cover those in another blog post.
If you have any questions about stamps or anything else, click here to get in touch!
