Stamps on eBay

in_my_wellies

My son uses loads of 2nd LL stamps. Being rather unwise he bought a sheet from ebay last month from a seller with mixed household items and only a few stamps. A day later he received a message from the seller saying his account was on hold and he would refund him as soon as he could. 

The refund arrived after a couple of days along with a very apologetic message from the seller telling him to be very careful because he himself had been caught out and was nearly in a lot of trouble.  Apparently his late mother had bought the stamps and he was clearing her house, just selling this odd sheet. It sounded to us like one of the 'big stamp sellers' had reported him, little guy in trouble .........

Lesson learned, my son bought his from the Post Office now he's back in the UK.  

gt94sss2

pallyman said:

I have not sold sheets of stamps and i would not buy them if i ever needed to buy any,lol,The ones i have sold/will be selling are the books of 12 and books of 4 large letter which i think if people bought those they would  more likely be genuine.

Oh interesting. Do you mind me asking what circumstances have arisen for you to have excess stamps to sell? [I do completely believe you, I'm just curious ]

I've never sold stamps either but have thought about doing so.

Like @pallyman I also have spare books of 12 and books of 4 large letter stamps.
In our case, they come via https://postalsurveys.tnsglobal.com/home/private

pallyman

As gt94sss2 says,I did that but not for a while,Did not know they were still doing stamps i gave up when they started to me loads of stuff to send and receive parcels all the time which meant a trip to the sorting office  if i was out and  it was not worth it anymore,gt94sss2 do you still  do it.

hermante

Some of the sellers bought them a few years ago to make a profit. The price has risen enough that it covers the fees particularly if you get a £1 FVF weekend.

Also you can use promotions such as amex shop small and in the past there have been amex offers for WH smith, Morrison's, Tesco, (not sure if waitrose does stamps), and a long time ago there was an offer for the post office itself.

People who are doing this won't have massive quantities and will just be selling one or two booklets at a time.

The ones on blank sheets are obviously unfranked and chemically removed then new gum is applied.

Sellers with massive quantities of booklets, well if they are fake they are really good fakes as I have examined them with microscopes. Discount is usually not more than 20% whereas the reused stamps are 50% or more off.

There will be some from businesses which bought too many. Philatelink used to have the latest 1st and 2nd stamps for 15% off and I would hope he knows how to tell fakes apart from genuine.

emmbrook

Some good advice on how to spot fake stamps at this link - https://blog.norphil.co.uk/2019/12/machin-postal-forgeries-again-some-good.html

NBLondon

gt94sss2 said:

I've never sold stamps either but have thought about doing so.

Like @pallyman I also have spare books of 12 and books of 4 large letter stamps.
In our case, they come via https://postalsurveys.tnsglobal.com/home/private

I did that for some years and regularly sold the Large Letter books on eBay - usually getting around £3 for them.  Since they cost me nothing, I didn't care about the end price.   Every so often I buy sheets or minisheets of commemoratives to use for postage if I can get them at under face - a look at the seller's other items usually tells me if they are actually a stamp dealer or collector getting rid of excess stock.   I have always steered clear of the "off-paper" and "on gummed sheet" brigade as it had to be too good a deal to be true.

NBLondon

mimi1234 said:

Just a question, on normal stamps they have royal mail printed onto them in tiny little letters.  I'm just looking at some stamps I got from the Post Office.  On some of them it says "royal mail" in a straight light and on others it says "layor liam" as in it is printed backwards but the lines are sort of diagonal.  Is this normal?

Do you mean on the backing paper?   That can alternate between regular and upside down and large and small in different combinations depending on the printer.

Or do you mean in the wavy lines on the stamp itself?  These should always be forward - with the year of printing cropping up as M19L instead of MAIL in one place (above the Queen's forehead on a standard 1st/2nd, above the g on a Large 1st/2nd)   You may also see MBIL behind the queens head or MPIL to tell you whether it came from a sheet or a booklet.

If you have a genuine wrongly printed one that came from a Post Office then you should be selling it to a dealer for a large sum!

mimi1234

NBLondon said:

mimi1234 said:

Just a question, on normal stamps they have royal mail printed onto them in tiny little letters.  I'm just looking at some stamps I got from the Post Office.  On some of them it says "royal mail" in a straight light and on others it says "layor liam" as in it is printed backwards but the lines are sort of diagonal.  Is this normal?

Or do you mean in the wavy lines on the stamp itself?  These should always be forward - with the year of printing cropping up as M19L instead of MAIL in one place (above the Queen's forehead on a standard 1st/2nd, above the g on a Large 1st/2nd)   You may also see MBIL behind the queens head or MPIL to tell you whether it came from a sheet or a booklet.

Hi.  I mean on the stamp itself.  When you hold it right up to your face, you can see ROYAL MAIL printed on them in small little letters.  On some they are the right way in a wavy line so say ROYAL MAIL but on others it's backwards and says LAYOR LIAM.  Anyway, I've used all my stamps up now on items I had to post so will just buy postage from the PO. 

There used to be a guy on eBay who used to sell stamps at about £5 less than the value but he seems to have disappeared which is a shame.  

Thanks all.

Spoonie_Turtle

Looking at the 2 booklets to hand (1st and 2nd), by the Queen's head it says MI8L. The ROYAL MAIL on the backing goes in waves, with some upside-down and alternating large/small font line by line. I have ordered various booklets from RM so when those arrive I'll be interested to see how they look.

EDIT: behind the crown says MSIL for 1st, MTIL for 2nd. Also found another booklet (1st, Marvel) with MI9L by the Queen's head, and MCIL behind the crown. Backing is the same.

I have seen booklets on eBay with the backing printed in completely straight lines and only with the larger sized font, not smaller, also in black not grey. I assumed those were fake. 

gt94sss2

pallyman said:

As gt94sss2 says,I did that but not for a while,Did not know they were still doing stamps i gave up when they started to me loads of stuff to send and receive parcels all the time which meant a trip to the sorting office  if i was out and  it was not worth it anymore,gt94sss2 do you still  do it.

I did it until the start of the March lockdown, though as you say they seem to want you to post more parcels than they used too