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Old August 13th 16, 11:46 PM posted to rec.collecting.stamps.discuss
Victor Manta
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Posts: 1,256
Default Stamps held by the public and USPS revenues

"Victor Manta" wrote in message ...

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In Linn's Stamp News, August 10, 2016, from the article: "Why the U.S.
Postal Service’s net losses for the year are growing" by Bill McAllister, I
learned as follows:

"One of the changes USPS made in the quarter was a revision to how many
stamps are held by the public.

That revision added $1 billion to postal revenues in the latest quarter.

The Postal Service does not record postage as a revenue item until the stamp
purchased is used in the mail. It notes how many stamps the public has
purchased and records this number as a “deferred revenue-prepaid postage
liability.” "
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Sir Rien, David, thank you for commenting. Your interesting comments pushed
me to look a bit further.

In the same article it is written, in the beginning of it: "The price
reduction cut the price of a first-class letter-rate stamp to 47¢ from 49¢,
effective April 10."

I haven't correlated this piece of information to the one that I quoted
earlier but perhaps they have something in common. In accountancy terms for
each forever stamp that USPS sold previously to the public it owes now 2¢
less than earlier. This difference could be considered a net gain, that can
be computed and added to the "postal revenues in the latest quarter". The $1
billion amount is maybe coming from here.

We can infer even more. Because USPS told us that: "That revision added $1
billion ...", and we talk about approximatively 4 percent (more exactly 2¢
divided by 49¢) of the whole, we can infer that the total value of stamps
hold by the customers of the USPS is about $25 billion. In other words, the
public is constantly crediting USPS with this amount (one that counts, like
everything in large amounts).

Please notice that I don't speak here about older stamps held by collectors,
many of which lost a good part of their value due to postal prices
inflation, that was higher than the general one. I remember that we
discussed this latter subject here many years ago.

Victor Manta, PWO

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