The "Forever" stamps are calculated for 1 oz. first class letter mailing. If I'm mailing a package or an oversized envelope, etc., requiring more than 44 cents, I just let the postal person use their postage meter labels. I've futzed around with 1 and 2 cent stamps to make up for postage increases long enough - these Forevers are brilliant as far as I'm concerned. I bought $100 worth when they were first introduced at 42 cents way back in April of 2007. Still using them with a handful of cards left to go. I'm glad there will be commemoratives though, the regular postal issues can be a bit bland.

As soon as I heard of the forever stamps I went and bought 500 stamps. It cost a bit but since then the price of stamps has increased by $0.10 each and continue to go up steadily.If I use every stamp before the next price hike I will have saved near to %50.00 on stamps and the savings can only go up! I made a good DEAL! CT

Postage is postage, use them wherever you need postage. I've never had an issue. AFAIC we've been getting ripped off for a long time. Prepaying postage meant we bought the delivery of a 1st class letter and if you didn't use it for a few years shouldn't mean there's an expiration on it. It's about time they did the "forever" thing, which was done to sell more stamps anyway since people got sick of postal increases and started buying smaller amounts of stamps. I've been using the online and bank for bill-paying for years now and it's great. My bank will also send a check if they can't do electronic transfer for me so they pay the postage, check fee and envelope, rather than me. Very convenient and it's certainly a savings on postage using online. 10-15 payments per month means nearly $5-$7.50 per month just in postage, plus there's a small cost in envelope and I often tape the envelope shut for extra security, again a minimal cost but a cost nonetheless. Plus the gas and vehicle costs to take them to the mailbox or post office since I don't like putting them in the house mailbox unless I can keep an eye on it for safety. There has been too many times where kids and even not-so-kids have messed with the mail and I don't always get out and about every day. And for me it's not worth keeping 22¢ stamps around so when I need additional postage I sacrifice the cost of another stamp. In any case, I've quit sending Christmas cards, and use fax, email and instant messenger for a lot of communication so I use very few stamps these days. Even mail-order purchases are usually credit card or PayPal so my mail system use is very little and I'm very pleased about that. I got totally disgusted with the Post Office when they couldn't get a newspaper to me in less than 10-15 days so I don't want to give them any more business than necessary.

Little_Minnie- Sorry to hear that you've gotten packages with postage due/smashed seeds. I've only been trading seeds for the past few months and luckily have not encountered any problems. I agree that bubble envelopes aren't absolutely necessary, if you've figured out a method to protect the seeds in a regular envelope (like I wrote in my original post about the trade I received in a regular envie... all seeds arrived in perfect condition). The post office can definitely be a pain in the you know what ;) I've taken to using the self check out kiosk so that I don't get over charged for sending bubble envelopes that are under 3/4". The self check out kiosk in my post office has a slot that only Large Flat Envelopes and Letters will fit through... so they can't say I'm not following guidelines. Now I can avoid the lines and the automatic parcel designation that the mail clerks are fond of :) tergrov- I do the same thing! My sister buys a ton of stuff from ebay and they always come in bubble envelopes so I tell her to save them all for me. Haven't had to buy a single one of my bubble envelopes yet :)