Counterfeit stamps

campdave · 9 March 2016 at 3:14PM

pappa_golf wrote: »

and then account about 20% for postage

You what now?

thewrongtrousers · 9 March 2016 at 11:20PM

RFW wrote: »

Therefore the only stamps will be either stolen, once used (also technically stolen) or counterfeit. So you'd be on a sticky wicket getting confirmation from Royal Mail or a Post Office.

Sorry but this is misleading, see my answer below, many people collect stamps, buy them mint and keep them in albums or in their commemorative packets.

cattie wrote: »

Many of the ebayer sellers listing Royal Mail stamps not in booklet form will mention that the stamps are not legal for posting purposes as they would have already been through the postal system & are being sold for philatelic purposes only.

Why would they do that, it has no bearing whether they are in a booklet or not the issue is whether the stamps have been used previously or not. If they have not is perfectly acceptable to use them as long as they are post decimal.

RFW wrote: »

I can't see a good reason why someone would sell stamps getting two thirds of the face value back when the lowest RM go to retailers is about 85%.

Because they may have bought them cheaper. We often buy stamps from collections at auction, these are often mint unused stamps kept in albums, often it is at a fraction of the price that the stamps are worth. The only stamps worth keeping are those marked 1st and 2nd Class as these will actually go up in value. We sell a lot of items on eBay and elsewhere however it is very impractical to use stamps for these items as we mostly use couriers e.g. Collect Plus or My Hermes where stamps cannot be used. Also if you happen to have £100's of pounds of stamps e.g. £1 each or 50p etc then it is very time consuming to break these down correctly for letters, large letters, small parcels, medium parcels etc and quite often money will be lost on each. Far more practical to just sell them and get 60-65% of face value.