When You Don't Need 10,000 10¢ Stamps…

Wow, JLLebbert, I had entirely missed your conversation earlier in the thread. Thank you for pointing that out!

I just got off the phone with the USPS again, and they had indeed added 500 Grapes to my order. The agent could not fix it herself, but requested that I call back between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern tomorrow and ask to be transferred to Stamp Fulfillment Services to resolve the issue. I'll report back what I find, including whether 777515 is the correct SKU for a strip of 500 Nonprofit.

Thanks again.

777515 is not valid. I spoke directly with a supervisor in Kansas City to confirm this morning. The only strip size for USA Nonprofit is twenty-five (SKU #777503), with a maximum of four strips of 25 by credit card.

I am a little bit worry with the format of strip of 25. The strip will include one stamp with Plate number. According to my past experience, USPS will probably fold the strip in 10-10-5 and ship it flat. However, it will be difficult to find one unfolded PNC9. It is impossible to get an unfolded PNC11.

This is actually expensiver than it looks. You use up 10-cent stamps that you bought at face value, thereby passing up the opportunity to buy discount postage for 80 to 90 cents on the dollar and use that. So it is actually more costly, and you wind up paying a greater amount of money.

msfong: I purchased 5 25-stamp strips of the 5-cent non-profit coil. All came folded identically, with folds between the 10th & 11th stamps and between the 20th & 21st stamps. The result is two unfolded strips of 10 and one unfolded strip of 5. The plate number was always in the same spot ... on the 15th stamp. So I basically received 5 unfolded PNC9s with an extra stamp on the right end. Along with a few extra stamps, of course.

This was my exact experience — and one of the five had the backing paper number behind the plate number.

From these ten sample points, it seems as if SFS is cognizant of the fact that there are PNC9 collectors who are buying stamps in this format and that they are cutting and folding appropriately.

Had the day off from work today, so I thought I'd take a leisurely drive down some backroads and wound up in Oneco, CT! What a great service to stamp collectors. Got these at face value and spent only a few dollars. Forget buying 10K coils from SFS, when I can get these only 45 minutes away from my front door!

Wt1, great! Wished I could do that. But I looked up where Oneco CT is, and it is going to take me at least two days to get up there. And the gas is going to cost me a fortune.
OK I am just kidding. But one thing always amazes me - that a small Post Office usually has the best choice of stamps that are current. Did you check on any of the high value stamps? That is where I have most of the trouble.

Peter

The Oneco postmaster was at the show in NYC on Tuesday.