SYRACUSE, N.Y. - So it will happen again. The price of a stamp will soon increase by two pennies. Of course it's almost inevitable, given the current state of our economy, however, stamp collector Ed Bailey says fret not! It's not the first increase and it won’t be the last. Look on the bright side, he says. Mail today is a bargain compared to yesteryear!

"The first stamp printed for the U.S. was 1847. A five cent and a 10 cent. The five cent was for less than 300 miles and the 10 cent was for over three hundred miles and more depending on how far it was," Bailey said.

It was an additional ten cents for every 300 miles. Case in point: a letter traveling from Albany, New York to Portland Oregon would have cost the author roughly $2.95. According to Google maps, it's a 2, 951 mile trip. Divide that by 10 cents and you get your $2.95. Today, a mere 42 cents! And by May, cents.

"For quite a length of time, we were doing things like every several years and instead of a penny or two it would be more like three or four cents," said Maureen Marion, spokesperson of the Syracuse Post Office. "For the average person, it was still a couple of dollars a year change in postage. It wasn't prohibitive."

Then again, that depends on who you are. For some, every penny counts. Have you ever tried to wash the ink off of a stamp to preserve it? If so, you wouldn't be the first!

"The reason they punched holes in stamps was so the stamp would absorb the ink when it was cancelled, thereby making it difficult to wash the ink off stamps. I mean, can you believe, in our history, there was a time when people would wash the ink off one cent stamps to preserve so they could use it again?" Bailey said.

As they say, history repeats itself! The increase is slated for May 11th.