By By Adam Prestridge
If you are someone stuck with a book or roll of 39-cent stamps, you are not alone.
Lines began to form early Monday morning at the Atmore Post Office and later reached the doorway as people waited to purchase additional postage for their packages.
"It's a Monday and we're normally busy like this on a Monday," Atmore postmaster Lester Cogollo said. "For the last month we've been getting calls asking when we're going up on our rates."
The price of first-class stamps increased from 39 cents to 41 cents Monday. Cogollo said there are stamps available to those with 39-cent stamps to make up the difference in postage.
"We have makeup stamps for all the different denominations for the different type of mailings they have," he said. "We have one cent and two cent stamps. We will always have them available. The only thing is that when people purchase two-cent stamps, rather than buy 50 of them, buy the amount they need. So if you have 15 39-cent stamps, all they need are 15 two-cent stamps. The last rate change we had, we had people coming in wanting to buy 200 or more and they only had a handful of old stamps. We like to sell the customer what they need."
Cogollo said despite the increase, there were some decreases.
"In some areas, the prices dropped and in other areas there was a rate increase," he said.
One of the more noticeable decreases is for the second ounce for first-class postage. Before Monday's change, it cost 23 additional cents for the second ounces, but with the change that was lowered to 17 cents.
"If you have something that weighs two ounces as opposed to one ounce it requires only an additional 17 cents instead of an additional 23 cents," Cogollo said.
For those that do not want to go through the hassle of having to add additional stamps should another increase occur, the Forever Stamp is also available for 41 cents. The Forever Stamp is good for one-ounce, first-class rates forever, no matter what increases are made.