There aren’t many people alive today who can remember the last time the Postal Service made it cheaper to buy a stamp. Yet this week, the cost to mail a letter declined to 47 cents, the post office’s first such decrease in 97 years.
For most of the 20th century, a stamp for a first-class letter weighing an ounce or less cost just 2 or 3 cents. The last reduction came after World War I, when the government again began charging customers the peacetime rate of 2 cents a stamp. The first year that the price exceeded a dime was in 1975, according to the Postal Service’s historian.
Since dimes today are worth less than pennies were during the Great Depression, the real cost of sending mail is now about the same as it was in 1932, when regulators increased the price of a stamp from 2 cents to 3 cents.
