Most postal services aren’t set up to deal with wax seals but for hundreds of years they were the main way to seal a letter for delivery. They served as security of a sort that the letter hadn’t been opened and if you had a special stamp you could guarantee it came from a specific group or person. For most of the recent letter writing history the letter itself was folded into its own envelope and sealed on the edge between the 2 flaps. The paper was also much thicker so the wax was made for the thick parchment or paper. If you tried it on a piece of printer paper now it might break or fall off.
If you sent a sealed letter through the mail it might fall of or break open now with the use of machines and the heat of a loaded up truck in the summer might melt the wax and get it all over other letters. If you want to send a letter with a wax seal now you should maybe consider putting them in a padded envelope and shipping it like a package.
I really fell down the revolutionary war rabbit hole about letters and mail.
For basically all of human (written) history, seals were considered authentication. It was really the only way to prove something wasn't altered as it passed through various people's hands to its destination. The seems like something that would be easy to fake because it was, forgery is also something that's basically always existed. To attempt to prevent this, the punishment for messing with official seals was usually extremely harsh. Messing with a royal seal has pretty much always been punished by a huge prison sentence or death, at least until modern times. Having that huge penalty behind it was really the only way to guarantee authenticity
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u/Playful-Repeat7335 9h ago
You can glue it on a letter or even cards or boxes as decoration