Replacing stamps with bar coded ones

Should've bought Christmas stamps, they will still be valid after the deadline.

I rounded-up all my "old" stamps and sent them off last week, got the replacements back yesterday, they replaced all 1st, 2nd and large-letter stamps with barcoded equivalents, then totalled the value of all other stamps (I had quite a lot of 1p, 19p and 20p for some reason) and converted those into to 1st class plus a few 20p and a single 1p ones to make up the value.

Yes even normal 1st/2nd class stamps are now larger than the old large-letter stamps.

Yes, and the 'books' are not physically larger, so they contain fewer stamps

That's just so that people can afford them ...

(yawn) Oh!

That will be really annoying if they total up the small value stamps. We have a fair collection of stamps of values 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p precisely so that we can use old stamps with specific values up to the new values when we need to send "large" letters or things abroad, especially before Christmas. Although we have a fair collection of commemorative stamps gathered over the years, there never seems to be one that is quite right for the current large/overseas rates. I suppose I'll have to send them off to be replaced some time, but will put that off as long as possible.