FYI for Sellers: Growing Difficulties in Getting Non-Machineable (Butterfly) Stamps

For those of us who are TCGPlayer or eBay sellers and blow through the non-machineable Butterfly/Hairstreak stamps -

They're not being discontinued or anything (as of right now) but I'm being told by my local USPS that many post offices are no longer ordering them to keep in stock, on hand, due to cost cutting. I live in a medium-sized city in central Florida and only one of the three post offices are now actually stocking them, but the timeframe to get them when they reorder has also gone up considerably.

This has been a problem for the last few months, and the USPS manager told me that she has heard about this happening across the country, along with other more specialty stamps/supplies that don't get actively advertised or hung out on display for sale. She expects that eventually they might stop being regularly available in the physical post offices altogether due to the hassle.

In addition, I was told that ordering them through the USPS website, the only other way to get them without a markup, is also a slow turnaround time to get your order delivered.

Bottom line, once I was able to find some today, I bought double my usual supply. I'd suggest stocking up just in case. 👍