USPS To "Abandon" Items With Counterfeit Postage

This seems like a good topic to post this in, as it relates to the topic. Some mailers just don't get it.

Someone ordered some modern used US stamps on ebay, as a gift for me (I think last year- so 2022). This is what they came in.

Shall we count the issues?

• Santa stamp=USED, has sparse spray-on cancel


• flag stamp=USED, has wavy line cancel + where's the USA FOREVER?


• frog stamp=looks uncancelled, but looks like peeled off envelope for reuse


• fireworks stamp=USED, looks like spray-on cancel


• gingerbread house=USED, looks like faint spray-on wavy line cancel


• Canoe stamp=not cancelled, but says "additional nonprofit postage paid", is that even valid postage for letters?


• 3 counterfeit flag stamps, I checked with a UV light, as well as printing quality and "look" being wrong

Only OK stamp might be the yellow G-rate one. Obviously someone at the USPS charged Postage Due, and marked invalid stamps, but seem to have missed the counterfeits, and I assumed didn't know about validity with the Canoe stamp.

The buyer complained to the seller about having to pay postage due, so the seller sent another envelope of stamps.
Here it is:

At least there's no no postage due this time, no counterfeits, and no cancelled stamps, but all have the look of having been peeled off uncancelled envelopes.

More specifically any non-forever and no flag stamps 33 cent denomination or higher. All other should be fine as counterfeiting exploded with the forever stamps after growing from fake flag stamps beginning at 33 cents. Prior counterfeits are extremely rare.

If the USPS were to demonetize older stamps to deal with this issue - and God forbid they go down that path - they better be issuing a lot of new denominations to cover various rates, particularly international rates. Using only stamps currently sold by the post office, some letter-mail rates would be difficult to meet exactly without using up all of the available space on the front of an envelope. This is to say nothing of package rates, but printable labels work better for those, anyway.

I've found the new 40-cent red fox stamp to be very useful in this regard, but some additional stamps in the 20 and 30-cent range would also be pretty useful, as would a $1.26 stamp (2nd ounce international) and 1.66 (2nd oz plus non-machinable). There are several others that would be useful as well to meet international rates, but I won't belabor the point.

In all candor, rather than demonetizing specific stamps or denominations, one could argue it would make more sense for the USPS to demonetize ALL stamps and just switch to labels for everything, with the exception of certain barcoded or specific-new-design domestic and international Forever stamps. Doesn't fit those rates, then stand in line at the post office.

(Not saying this SHOULD happen, but I can see a one-size-screws-all approach being taken.)

Here is another hard to counterfeit stamp but in this case it is a nonprofit presort so not likely found.

Demonetization won't happen because bulk mailers and consumers are sitting on millions of dollars of unused postage, and there's no national emergency to justify effectively seizing that value. It would just lead to litigation against USPS.

There is a simple way to solve this problem .......you go after a few of the larger sellers of Fake stamps ,haul them into court and be sure the press runs the story as front page news . Even get a few of the end users arrested and the Post Office refuses to make any delivery to their address for 5 years .

That will clean up the problem quick .

These stamps are coming out of China, so nobody is getting hauled into court.




On average, the Postal Service processes and delivers 167.3 million pieces of First-Class Mail each day. Given the quality of modern counterfeits, how long will it take for the post office to find these needles in that massive haystack?

ALUB ---Simple answer when you bust the big sellers , they leave a trail thru internet sellers of their buyers ,then you start picking a few smaller fish for judgements .

Works the same in drug sales , when you catch the big fish they always have records of their buyers ,works all the time .

Who in China is going to do that bust of the big sellers?

They'd probably have to do what they did in the UK, give people enough time to turn in the old stuff, have it verified and have new postage returned to them that will continue to be valid.

Alub - they are being made in China, but there are sellers of significant amounts in the US.

But wouldn't new stamps just put you in the same place?

I get at least 100 stamped return envelopes a year that I don't send back.Mainly to weddings. What is wrong with peeling off the unused stamps and applying to a different envelope. Which may well be the case here.






No sure how small the needle is. From what I can see (NYC area) counterfeit stamps are rampant. Every convenience store sells them

That is where the USPS should start. You can generate some big headlines with a raid on a store that is selling counterfeits. It will only take a couple before everyone else stops selling them.