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Postage stamp.

First-class · per letter · USPS rate history · all available data

A first-class stamp vs. official inflation, 1971–2025

Indexed: 1971 = 100 · What consumers actually paid (retail) compared to overall CPI-U All Items

Postage, retail price (USPS rate history, 1971+) CPI-U All Items (BLS, 1947+)

Reading the chart. The USPS first-class stamp is government-set (regulated by the Postal Regulatory Commission), making it one of the cleanest "unchanging product, unchanging unit" items in any inflation tracker. The price is held constant between rate changes and updated as a step function — the chart fills intermediate years with the prevailing rate.