Postage stamp
The twentieth and twenty-first century

After World War II, it became customary in some countries, especially small Arab nations, to issue postage stamps en masse as it was realized how profitable that was.

During the 21st century, the amount of mail—and the use of postage stamps, accordingly—has reduced in the world because of electronic mail and other technological innovations. Iceland has already announced that it will not issue new stamps for collectors anymore because the sales have decreased and there are enough stamps in the stock. In 2013 the Netherlands PostNL introduced Postzegelcodes, a nine-character alphanumeric code that is written as a 3x3 grid on the piece of mail as an alternative to stamps. In December 2020, 590,000 people sent cards with these handwritten codes.
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