Royal Mail 1st class stamps as currency and store of value

The cost of postage tracks debasement ("inflation") pretty well.  This is one of the ways you knew they were lying to you during the "low inflation" era.  When they said it was 1%, stamps were "going up" by 6% (actually, the currency was going down by this amount, being debased).

The Royal Mail has a nice system where a 1st class stamp is a first class stamp, and is marked as such, instead of being marked with its monetary value.  A practical effect is that one can stock up on stamps in advance, and not have to stock up on tiny-value delta stamps when the price as denominated in the debasing fiat increases.  Nothing screams "I live in an extremely backwards country" like a row of stamps on the envelope, one for 1.xx fiats, the next for 0.04 fiats, the next for 0.07 fiats, or whatever the increases were.  This doesn't happen when a first-class stamp is just a first-class stamp.

As an "investment", entering a period of high debasement, it's worth stocking up on a lifetime's supply of stamps.  If debasement is running at 10% per year, then someone on a marginal rate of 50% would have to get a "return" of 15% per year denominated in the collapsing currency, plus do a load of tax admin, just to tread water.  For the cost of storing the stamps, they will hold their value in real terms, giving the same "return".

Would they work as currency?  When I was a kid, postage stamps were a common way to pay, especially remotely, which meant by post.  In this case, to clarify, mint stamps would go inside the envelope as payment, not on the outside as postage.  This was before the fixed-value 1st class (and 2nd class and various options like big) stamps came in, from memory in the nineties.  The stamps had face values like 21p, and that's the value they were used for.  It worked fine.  Now it would work even better, because the nominal value is bound to increase over time.  All else being equal, something like Gresham's law should predict that 1st-class postage stamps will come to be preferred over bank notes in a high-debasement era.  

And is all else equal?

How portable are they?  Current normal 1st class stamps are 85p, so a book of 100 is worth 85 GBP.  This is higher than the highest-value note in circulation, which is 50 GBP.  This represents only several hours' work at the median wage, so is tiny, and calls into question the UK's designation as "developed".  The book of 100 stamps is bulkier than the 50 GBP note.  How much?  I will have to measure it next time I'm in England, or see if a friend will indulge this whim.  Maybe I can persuade them of the idea of "investing" in them at the same time.  In any case, 85 GBP of inflation-proofed money in the format of around 2 thick sheets of paper is not bad.

How about divisibility?  You can cut up the books of stamps.  It wouldn't be the normal way of giving change, but in a bind you could do it.  I had a recent experience in Pizza Express in Oxford, one of the most backward cities in the current "cashless society" let's end civilization malarky.  The bill was around 25 GBP, and I was going to add a tip.  I paid with a 50.  They asked if I had anything smaller.  At the risk of pointing out something extremely obvious, "something smaller" would not have covered the bill, the next rung on the something-smaller ladder being 20 GBP.  Getting back to the point, if a place is arseing around with giving change, you could resort to cutting the book of stamps.  As long as you don't cut through a stamp, and you just cut between them, no value is really lost.

What's the background demand rate?  Any administratively-operational person will use at least 100 a year, even if it's just for posting screenshots to businesses pointing out that their uniquely-rubbish messaging system built in to their web site is not working, and here is what you wanted to say via that mechanism.  If you're using less than that, make a card and send it to a loved one with your handwriting in it.

So for store of value, portability, divisibility, and, ahem, excuse me, intrinsic value, these things are not bad.

I guess also for privacy.  Do the books of stamps have serial numbers?

If this all sounds silly now, wait until the era of high debasement has really set in.

Will they be withdrawn?  Or would that be a too-blatant "fuck you plebs" from the money-printing cabal? The technical term for not being able to tread water with interest rates vs debasement is "financial repression".  So another way of putting the question is whether the government will allow an escape from their financial repression to continue to exist in Backwards Britain.