Personalized Stamps... What Happens Afterwards?

I bought a large plastic bag of stamps on paper at a local charity shop. Seems the local school kids were collecting used stamps and handed them over to the charity shop. As I trawled thru the bag I came across several of those "personalized" stamps (I think in the UK they are called Smilers(tm)). I actually recognized the photos attached to the stamps as being of a family I know. This leads me to wonder if that family are actually aware of the implications of being "on stamps". Would they be content knowing that a total stranger could have bought the bag and their stamps? Would they be happy to know that the stamps (and attached photos) could be in someone's album? Suppose one of the stamps was a rarity for some reason and it appeared on ebay (complete with attached child's/ wife's photo) for the world to look at and bid on. They would have no say in the matter as far as I can tell.

I personally don't care for them and totally see your point on privacy. Scary proposition if you ask me but then again you wouldn't really use them to just pay bills and unless your a rock star or serial killer it probably wouldn't end up on ebay? I would rather just avoid the "smilers" all together.

If you read the pages of terms and conditions from any of a number of the websites that offer these personalized postage stamps, they specifically prohibit using images of any celebrity, politician, criminal, etc. In fact, you can't even use historical images, or any printed text that may have come from the internet, assuming that all such items have some copyright protection unless you can prove otherwise.

As suggested above, it's highly unlikely any personalized stamp will become that valuable that it will show up on ebay as a rarity, but even if it should, there are so many disclaimers on the websites producing the stamps that you would have little chance of making any claim of privacy out of it, so it's essentially free reign for anyone interested in collecting them.

I know a lot of people use these stamps for announcing a new baby or a kid's birthday or a family vacation, as it is assumed these premium cost stamps would only be sent to a family member who may want to retain the stamp as a keepsake, but there is also no recourse should it wind up landing in a lot of kiloware sometime later.

This is the type of Smiler© I got in my bag of charity stamps. The 1st class stamp is an actual stamp and the photos are attached as a label. It is within the realms of possibilities that the stamp could be flawed and end up on ebay... ok, not likely to happen ... but!


EDIT...I just remembered the 17 pin Machins variety so, it could happen that this stamp and photo pair could have a perforation flaw such as that so separating them would not be good idea should ebay be an option!

If the stamp shown is perf 15x14 and printed in Photogravure, then it is from the year 2000 or 2001 and will have a mark-up on any other issue.
The catalogue value for a sheet of 10 of the above stamp in 2007 was either £200 [Year 2000] or £700 [2001] ! A single, if that's what this is...well, you do the maths !

Nice find.

ISTM that if one uses these personalized stamps, one should only customize them with images that they would not be concerned about showing to every other person on the planet...

Thanks for posting scotzm

Next week I will be listing some personalised stamps.
So this is a great topic for me.

It will be very interested to see what happens as I am told personalised stamps are very popular.

I have 9 or so from the 1990's & 4 from 2011 to list this time.

Never considered the privacy angle.

The images would only be up on ebay for a very short time. Also the people in an image will changed with age.
The buyer would also restrict the viewing of the image by the very nature of it being in a stamp collection.

Very interesting. KGV

Londonbus said If the stamp shown is perf 15x14 and printed in Photogravure, then it is from the year 2000 or 2001 and will have a mark-up on any other issue.
The catalogue value for a sheet of 10 of the above stamp in 2007 was either £200 [Year 2000] or £700 [2001] ! A single, if that's what this is...well, you do the maths !

Nice find.

Er...my point was that, despite the 1st class stamp actually being totally worthless, it COULD in theory be worth something should it be flawed or perforated differently to the normal (the 17 pin Machin is an example of this). The example I posted is nothing special in any way and I would normally bin it but used it as an example to illustrate my point.

If it's from 2000 or 2001 it's a keeper.
Some personalized stamps and label sheet stamps from all over the world have shot up in price.
A couple of years back I sold a very personalized Israel stamp to a total stranger for $110. The stamp cost me 80c and was 5 years old.
The stranger became a friend !

Londonbus1

Oooo! I had thought the high prices were for the mint sheets with the generic labels. Time for a rethink and a research. Thank for the info and the possibility of untold riches from my bunch of charity stamps

Another "find" in my charity stamps bag is this.



I was looking for the value and the queens head...still cannot see them
I stopped collecting the booklets and sheets of GB years ago so might have missed something. Is this a booklet label used for postage?...is it a great rarity with missing head band value? Can I retire on the proceeds should I sell it? Anyone id this bird?