Question regarding an SASE with UK postage

[Blackhawks026]

This question is mainly aimed at anyone living in the US that use british postage on their SASE.

I asked this question earlier, but never got much of a response. Anyways, I live in the US and i just got some UK stamps. I've sent some requests to the UK, but never included an SASE (just SAE with $). So I'm wondering how many stamps to put on the SASE (also, how many uk stamps do you put on YOUR sase?). I'll be using to sized envelopes, one is 9x11 weighing no more then 2oz and the other is 6x9 no more then 1.5oz. I got a response in a 9x11 envelope from Shirley Henderson, who lives in the UK, and she included 4 2nd class UK stamps on the envelope, which seemed like less postage then needed to ship from UK to USA. Also, I've got 1st class UK stamps.


Thanks in advance for any help!

[dfreely]

Royal Mail's prices can be found here: http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/cont ... d=53800712

Envelope size doesn't matter, so that can be ignored.

2oz would be roughly 57g, so that will cost you £2.07
1.5oz would be about 43g, so that will also cost £2.07

First class stamps are currently worth £0.46, so you would need five to cover £2.07. It may be worth finding out exactly how much that second envelope weighs, as if it falls under 40g, it would cost £1.65, which would save you a stamp. And if it is less than 40g, then it would be better to invest in the Worldwide Airmail 40g stamp as opposed to First Class ones.

[HappinessStan]

What dfreely says is right, you need to know (or estimate) the weight in grammes.

Another thing to think about is that in the UK stamps usually go up at the start of April, if you've got the ones which say just 1st or 2nd on you'll be covered as they will hold their value as US Forever stamps do, and always seem to rise proportionately to cover overseas postage as well.

There are four "Forever" style ones commonly available in the UK, 1st class, 2nd class, 1st class large letter and 2nd class large letter. I must admit I've never heard of the Worldwide Airmail ones, probably because I can't face queueing up in British post offices.

If you have stamps with prices printed on them then you need to make a judgement about the likelihood of getting them back before prices go up again. I can only think of about three out of three hundred or so replies I've had from the UK where the person I've written to has added a return address on the envelope. What will happen (and I know because this has happened to me) is that Royal Mail will put on a sticker requesting that the sender takes it to the post office to add more postage. No return address, it'll go to the dead letter office and be shredded.

I would imagine that Shirley Henderson put the large letter 2nd class stamps on, which are 58p each and would cover an envelope up to about 100g.

To save a bit of money on postage on larger envelopes, I refer you to the answer I gave in another thread the other day
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=228553