Does anybody know how many stamps I need to stick on the envelope to send a normal-sized christmas card to a pal in Ireland and not have it come back to me? 
How much does a christmas card weigh, then? 
In my experience of sending Xmas cards to the States, I go to the Post Office and ask how many stamps do I need on this.
They tell me.
I pay.
That simple.
It ain’t expensive.
Slan,
D. 
I do that too. But I don’t go to a P.O. in Scunthorpe is the only thing.
Lucky for you,
I went down to the P.O. a while back to send a DVD to a friend of mine in
Boston.
Had it all boxed up and addressed and everything and told the guy that I wanted to send it first class and Airmail..
“Where to ?”, he sez.
“The States”, sez I.
“The States..” sez he..“Where’s that?”
“America”, sez I.
“Oh , America”, sez he, " You mean the United States of America?"
“The very place”, sez I.
Then he told me how much and I paid the postage.
I am prepared to be charitable here and can kinda understand that Scunthorpe Post Office workers do not use the standard Irish expression for America - The States - but even a Scunny Bunny should know where the States are.
Cultural differences, eh.
Slan,
D.
I doubt it. Its more likely you were being politely corrected. Never underestimate the capacity of the officious to browbeat at every opportunity. 
djm
If you were the man on the desk, and you got it in the neck if there was a mistake, even if it wasn’t your mistake, you would be officious too.
Time was, “The States” could mean “The United Federal Soviet States of Russia”. It still could mean “The League of Arab States” or the seven states of Myanmar.
But I’ve been to Post Offices, or what pass for Post Offices, in the U.S.A., and can understand the reluctance to go anywhere near them. Despite the fashion for emulating the U.S. Postal Service, the Royal Mail still does a good job, including the mystery service where they miraculously manage to accurately deliver letters with addresses like “The lady in the blue Cardigan on Watling street”.
The Royal mail do publish details of what postage is required for what weight (and now size) of letters and packets, to various places.
Does the U.S. Postal Service not do this? Oh yeah, there’s a nice link from Jeferson.
The answer to the original question is “One, if it’s big enough.”
I’ve always just stuck two first class stamps on, if I didn’t want to fool with weighing an overseas envelope. It’s always worked.
It actually takes more than 2 first-class stamps to get a letter to Ireland now, although I don’t remember exactly what the postage is. I had to send a bunch of thank you cards there after my wedding this year, but since I had like 5 rolls of stamps I just stuck 2 first-class & 1 postcard stamp on each. That worked, although I think it’s something closer to 83 cents or something.
J.
Bleh. I think I’ll just jam three on there and hope it works.
Thanks everybody.
Presently it’s $0.84 for a first class letter to Italy. I imagine that it’s the same or maybe a little less to Ireland.
Mike
Right. A standard Christmas card takes a 39 cent stamp. Therefore, using the Domestic Rate Chart, I deduce that a standard Christmas card weighs less than 1 ounce. Looking at the International Rate Chart, I see that a 1 ounce letter requires 84 cents in postage to Ireland.
There is a requirement to include the county and a postal code.
Also, do not send any advertisements for venereal disease preventives unless your recipient is a physician or registered pharmacist.
That is a Christmas greeting I frankly hadn’t considered, ever.
And what, by the way, is a postal code? Is it the same as one’s ZIP code?
a zip code is a postal code
but not all postal codes are zip codes…
One o’dem US & them things…
I don’t believe that Ireland DOES have postal codes (well, they might in Dublin, but I’m not sure). When sending something to Ireland, you would address it like this:
Person’s name
Street address
Town
County
IRELAND
nope…coming in 2008
the Royal Mail still does a good job, including the mystery service where they miraculously manage to accurately deliver letters with addresses like “The lady in the blue Cardigan on Watling street”.
We here at the good ole USPS do that too. In my office anyway. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at a return address to figure out who “Grandma” might go to, seeing as how the address is no help. Or sometimes when there’s no address, we can tell from the postmark where it was mailed, remember that so-and-so has family that lives there, and figure out where it goes. Others that need some deduction are bills, catalogs, etc. with no box number and I’ve got more than one person with that name on my route. I usually can tell which one it goes to by the type of mail. (be aware that your mail carrier knows more than they really want to know about you just from the type of mail they deliver to you)
Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. There’s never a letup, It’s relentless. Every day it piles up more and more, but the more you get out, the more it keeps coming. And then the bar code reader breaks. And then it’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse day.
