Please help me send a SASE internationally.

August 13, 2013 12:05 PM

I am in the US, and I would like to send letters to both the UK and Canada and include a self addressed stamped envelope. As of January 27, International Reply Coupons are apparently no longer being sold by the USPS . What are my options?

What's the best way to go about this now that IRCs have been discontinued? Do I need to contact acquaintances in those countries and bribe them to send me some of their country's stamps? Buy them online?

If the answer is "buy them online," could you please specify which type of stamps in what amounts I would need to get? I plan on mailing a basic 4 1/8" x 9 1/2" envelope. Thanks!

posted by meggan to Law & Government (4 answers total)

Best answer: I did this in reverse for my wedding invitations (sent from the UK to the US and Australia, with reply stamps for those countries on the RSVPs). The postal service websites for both countries should allow you to both calculate postage for your size (and potentially weight!) of your letters, and to order the stamps. I also recommend you google around for any planned postage increases -- one happened mid-wedding-RSVP-period for me and meant some US RSVPs didn't make it across the pond.
posted by olinerd at 12:20 PM on August 13, 2013

Best answer: How much time do you have? A lot of people are selling IRCs on eBay. Ones issues after 2009 but before July 1st are good to the end of 2013, and typically run a few bucks each.
posted by kaszeta at 12:39 PM on August 13, 2013

Best answer: You can't buy IRCs from the USPS but they're still sold in other countries and there's an online market for them. (They were traditionally used very heavily by amateur radio operators for QSL cards, although it's a bit of a declining practice.)

You want "Nairobi Model" or "Doha Model" IRCs. Don't buy older ones (e.g. Beijing Model) accidentally, as they can't be redeemed anymore.

That said, IRCs aren't really equivalent to a SASE; the recipient has to take the IRC to a Post Office counter and exchange it for a stamp. Kind of a pain.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:22 PM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I found some Canada-to-USA appropriate stamps on the Canada Post website, and thanks to olinerd's advice I managed to find the place to calculate postage on a UK-to-USA letter on the Royal Mail website. I think I'll start there versus fiddling with IRCs, though I really appreciate the help in terms of what to look for w/r/t IRCs and where. (eBay didn't even occur to me.) Thanks everyone!
posted by meggan at 5:40 PM on August 16, 2013