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" On Monday, the U.S. Postal Service raised the price of postage for the second straight year, lifting the cost of a first-class stamp two cents to 41 cents. This move is not shocking -- after all, the price of a stamp has been reduced just one time in the history of the Postal Service, erasing a temporary 1-cent hike enacted during World War I. But along with today&amp;#039;s hike, the boys in blue made one surprising move, creating the &amp;quot;forever stamp&amp;quot;, ensuring that the 41 cents you spend today can be used to mail a first class letter no matter how high rates go tomorrow. &amp;quot;When stamp prices are adjusted, for example, to 41 cents and you have a 39-cent stamp, you have to buy a 2-cent stamp or use two stamps to cover the new postage rate,&amp;quot; says Mike Plunket, Acting Vice President of Pricing and Classification for the U.S. Postal Service. &amp;quot;If you have &amp;#039;forever stamps,&amp;#039; it doesn&amp;#039;t matter what happens to the rate of postage -- you can still use those stamps no matter what the new price is.&amp;quot;  By producing a stamp that retains its value over time, the U.S.P.S. has effectively commoditized the price of mailing a letter. And given the remarkable rise in the price of a stamp over the last decade -- and the fact stamp prices are stable and have only fallen by a single penny since the invention of the stamp 122 years ago -- these forever stamps could be a decent short-term investment.  Why not? As the chart above shows, over the last eight years, the price of a stamp has outperformed all of the major stock market indices, gaining 24.2 percent. That&amp;#039;s better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average (up 23.5 percent) and the S&amp;amp;amp;P 500 (up 7.9 percent). And it&amp;#039;s a lot better than those people who invested in the more volatile and speculative Nasdaq Composite Index, which is actually down 1.1 percent over that span.  Naturally, the Postal Service doesn&amp;#039;t see it that way. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t design this to be an investment,&amp;quot; Plunket says. &amp;quot;If people elect to do it we won&amp;#039;t stop them, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t recommend it.&amp;quot;  Don&amp;#039;t expect big corporations to back up the truck and try to hedge against future postage increases, however. For starters, corporations buy in bulk, purchasing 10,000 stamps on a single roll -- forever stamps won&amp;#039;t be sold in such massive allotments. &amp;quot;Most business users use either meters or postage that doesn&amp;#039;t require a stamp,&amp;quot; Plunket says. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re not affected by price changes in the same way that consumers are.&amp;quot;  In the long run, the stock market has easily outperformed the rise in stamps. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up a whopping 29,764 percent since it was created in 1896. Over the same span, stamps jumped from 2 cents to 41 cents -- a gain of just 1,950 percent. (The S&amp;amp;amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite show similar exponential growth since their inceptions, too.)  On a near-term basis, investing in forever stamps may seem like a good idea -- but as the saying goes, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s only worth something if someone will pay you for it.&amp;quot; So unless a red-hot secondary market for postage emerges, forever stamps aren&amp;#039;t a great investment. But from the looks of things they certainly are a good buy, regardless. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a2722/stamps032107/>