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internetmarke.md

How to buy a German postage stamp online

The Chaos Communication Congress is all-remote again this year, and there's another sticker exchange happening! In order to participate, you need to mail a stamped envelope to the Sticker Operation Center, who will put some stickers in it and mail it back to you.

There's only one tricky bit: the stamp needs of course to be a German postage stamp, and these can be hard to come by if you're not in Germany. Fortunately, you can buy a stamp online and print it out from anywhere in the world! The site is only in German, though, so here's what you need to do if you don't read German.

Procedure

  1. Go to the German Post Office's online postage page. Interact with the cookies popup as you see fit.

  2. Click the "International" tab (not "Warenversand-International"), and then from the "Brief/Postkarte" list on the left, choose "Kompaktbrief bis 50 g". It'll cost €1.70.

  3. You can either print your stamp onto a piece of paper and then attach that paper to an envelope, or print directly onto an envelope or sticky labels. If you're interested in printing onto an envelope or sticky labels, find where it says "Ausdruck auf: Ausdruck 4-spaltig (DIN A4)", and choose the kind of thing you want to print on. Envelopes are under the "Briefumschläge" tab, and if you have North American #10 envelopes, they're about the same size as a "Brief DIN-lang 220 x 110", which you can find in the "Querformat" section. Click "Auswahl übernehmen" to save your choice. You can now click "Druckvorschau als PDF" if you want a sample PDF to test printing.

  4. Click the yellow "In den Warenkorb" button to add the stamp to your cart and proceed. Scroll down on the shopping cart page, confirm you agree to the terms of service by checking the "Ich erkenne die AGB an" checkbox, and click "Nächster Schritt" to move on.

  5. You can now create or sign into an account if you want, but you probably don't want to, so click the "Gastzugang nutzen" button in the "Gastzugang" section to proceed without an account.

  6. You can now enter your contact details to be included on your receipt, but there doesn't seem to be any way to enter non-German contact details, and this is not very interesting anyway, so click the checkbox at the top labeled "Ich benötige keine Rechnung per E-Mail oder per Post und gebe daher keine Rechnungsadresse an (nachträgliche Rechnungserstellung nicht möglich)."

  7. Enter your email address in the now-much-smaller form. You can click the checkbox below to be added to some kind of email newsletter, but probably you don't want to.

  8. Choose how you want to pay. The only options of likely interest are PayPal, Google Pay, and credit card ("Kreditkarte"). The credit card option didn't work for me, so I came back and used PayPal, but feel free to try it and see if you have better luck. Tap "Nächster Schritt" to move on.

  9. Enter your payment details.

  10. With any luck, it'll have worked, and you'll be on a confirmation page! Find the "Herunterladen" button on that page or in your email, and you'll have a PDF of a German postage stamp to use!

Now, follow the instructions on the sticker exchange to send your envelope to the Sticker Operations Center. Good luck, and happy stickering!

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