How many business cards can I mail in a single envelope without having to pay extra postage (due to weight)?

Question

I bought a bunch of business cards from vistaprint.com in order to promote my website...they are standard business cards printed on 80lb paper stock. No fancy coatings or anything. I'm going to mail out as many as I can to any of my members who wish to help promote my site and need to figure out how many I can mail at one time using only a single 42 cent stamp (or whatever they're up to now...). Letters can weigh no more than 1 oz so if someone could give me the average weight of a standard business card, I could work with that as well. ...trying to figure this out without making a trip to the post office, and don't have a postal scale handy.

Answer 1

It can't be more that 1/4" thick or weigh more than 1 ounce. I made a template out of a piece of cardboard: cut a rectangle slot that is 1/4" X 5 ". Once you've got the slot cut, stuff business cards in the envelope and try sliding the envelope through the rectangle slot you've cut. It should slide easily without  having to really stuff it through. Thicker than 1/4" will add extra postage. If you have a food scale, you can use that to measure weight up to 1 oz. I don't know exactly how many cards that equals though. Maybe you could look at the weight printed on the Vistaprint box and do some math to figure out how many ounces are in the box.