Before telling you how much are stamps now in the USA, I would like to tell about postage stamps in general, as you might want to know more about them.

A postage stamp on an envelope is an evidence in form of paper of a fee whic a person paid for postal services. In most cases a stamp takes a form of a small rectangle, which is attached or glued to a corner of an envelope.

Presence of a stamp identifies that its delivery is paid by a sender. Stamps are the most wide-spread and popular way of purchasing retail mail services, but there are some alternatives either. They include postage meters and prepaid-postage envelopes.

The hobby of collecting postage stamps is called philately and those who collect them are called philatelists. There are a lot of people around the world who are fond of collecting seemingly useless pieces of paper and they are willing to pay thousands of dollars for some rare stamps.

The very first postage stamps appeared on May 1, 1840 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. They were introduced as a part of reforms in the postal field, promoted by Rowland Hill. When this reform was approved, it was the sender who had to pay postage fee, not the recipient.

The Penny Black, which was the very first stamp, was put on sale on May 1, 1840 and was valid from May 6, 1840. The second stamp appeared two days later. It was a blue piece of paper whic costed two pence. Both stamps showed an engraved profile of the young Queen Victoria. These stamps were a great success.

The first stamps had even edges, but later perforations were instituted for convenience. UK stamps never had the name of their country on them. At the time there was no need in that and now they print a monarch's head in a corner of a stamp to identify the country of its origin.

Here are the most popular types of stamps:

• Airmail stamps. They are used to pay for airmail postage service. Usually you can see a word "airmail" or its equivalent on the stamp. Another sign of this type of stamps is a silhouette of an aircraft.
• ATM stamps. ATM stamps are dispensed by machine whose sheets are paper currency sized and of similar thickness.
• Customised stamps. These are stamps where you can choose what you want to see on them by yourself. You can do that by sending in your photo or by using your computer. Not all customised stamps can be called true stamps but they are an acceptable mean of paying for postage services.
• Definitive stamps. These are for ordinary everyday postage. They seldom have appealing designs. After all, they are not supposed to be collected. Thay are usually small and they can have the same design for many years. Anyway definitive stamps do have some value for philatelists, especially if after several years of being produced, thier design becomes slightly different. Philatelists love to have those "corrected" versions of them.
• Local post stamps. These are used in a local post mailings, that is within a limited geographical area (usually a small city or a single transportation route).
• Military stamps. Military stamps are used for mailings inside country's armed forces, which uses a special postal system as a rule.
• Official mail stamps. These are issued to be used by the government or governmental agencies.
  

At the moment of writing stamps cost 44 cents (since May 11th).