Forever Stamps On Ebay...

Greetings all - My name is Bob and a new member to this site. I am one of those people who have a never ending supply of stamps which I sell at a discounted rate. I own a small business which provides paralegal and other services to prisoners in the United States and a number of foreign countries. Many of the prisoners send stamps as payment which I then sell on ebay. I know there are other business out there that do the same thing but one has to still be careful as to who you buy from. Checking a sellers feedback rating is a good indicator as to legitimacy. On a side note - If anyone needs stamps - give me a holler!

Now there's a possibility that I hadn't thought of but that does make some sense. Postage stamps are the de facto currency amongst inmates inside most prisons.

I thought it was cigarettes.

I'm only going off what I read and I realize you probably already know this, but cigarettes are now contraband in prisons. When that happened, stamps became the currency of choice.

see http://gizmodo.com/5853770/deep-ins...gled-economy

If you are going to try stamp arbitrage here is a step by step guide someone came up with.

http://qz.com/128329/a-step-by-step...tage-stamps/

There are a bevy of new (access less than two months old) sellers on ebay with a plethora (usually a dozen, but sometimes hundreds across multiple listings) of assorted Forever stamps in sheets and booklets, and new sellers who repeatedly list and sell 1 Forever coil. These kind of listings are suspicious to me. These listings priced at around 70% of FV sell very quickly and people purchase hundreds of dollars worth of stamps if multiple coils or dozens of sheets are in a lot.

What are the probability of Forever stamps sold on ebay by third parties (not the official USPS store) being counterfeit and what recourse does a consumer have if they receive counterfeit stamps? Moreover, will employees at a USPS post office authenticate the stamps and if they indicate they are counterfeit, does the person inquiring get detained/arrested, is the person free to go but the stamps automatically forfeited, or is the person free to go home with the stamps and seek a refund from the ebay seller?

I have not heard or read any public service announcements in media from the USPS cautioning consumers about buying Forever stamps from third parties on ebay.

There are hundreds of Forever stamps sold by third parties daily on ebay. Why are people willing to take such a risk? I personally would only buy Forever stamps on ebay from the official USPS store.

Two of many, many articles on the counterfeit stamp problem:

https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...i-issue.html

https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...-stamps.html

rogdcam: Interesting articles. Thank you for posting.

I wonder if anyone has been prosecuted under 18 U.S. Code §#8239;501?

I wish the media would give more attention to this issue. They certainly have aired and written news stories cautioning the public about fake concert and sporting event tickets.