How To Get Stamps For Free

Getting stamps for free is easy.

There are many ways to get stamps for free:

1. Inform everybody you know (your relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors - everybody) that you collect stamps and ask them if they can save the stamps from their mail for you.
2. Similarly, tell everybody who writes letters to you that you collect stamps and would appreciate if they use a new or commemorative stamp when writing to you.
3. Do you sometimes send a self-addressed stamped envelope to a business or an office to get a catalog or a free sample or an application blank etc.? Well, always put a nice stamp on that envelope because it is going to come back to you.
4. Do you know anybody who has relatives or friends who live in a foreign country? Chances are that person receives letters from that country and therefore receives foreign stamps. Ask that person to save the stamps for you.
5. Large offices and big businesses receive hundreds of letters everyday. The person who opens the mail for these offices usually throws away hundreds of covers containing various kinds of stamps, unless her own niece has recently picked up this hobby. If you know such a person, and request the person to save the empty envelopes for you, you can amass large quantities of stamps in a short period of time.
6. International companies, import-export houses, consular offices, big hotels, university admissions offices, acquisitions department of large libraries - they all receive mail from foreign countries and many of them have stamps on them. If you know the person who handles the mail in these offices, your collection of foreign stamps can grow at a faster rate than you can imagine.
7. When you go the post office next time, look inside the waste paper baskets next to the P.O.Boxes. People usually collect their mail from the mail boxes, open the mail right there, and discard the covers in the nearest trash cans. A little rummaging through those trash receptacles can reward you with a philatelic jewel. (If not, at least with lots of bronze and silver). And remember, the bigger the post office, the bigger the bounty.
8. Do you have penfriends in foreign countries? If you make friendship with a person in a foreign country, he or she can supply you with lots of stamps that are ordinary or common for them but not to you. Similarly, your friend in the foreign country will appreciate receiving from you the stamps that are common to you but not to him or her.
9. Have you heard about stamp swapping, or stamp trading? That is a great way of increasing the size of your collection and getting varieties. You can swap your duplicates with a freind or a fellow collector.
10. Older people in the family can sometimes give you stamps that were issued before you were born. Ask your grandma and grandpa if they have any old letters saved.