How To SPOT FAKE Postage STAMPS
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- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
- Hi, in this video I show you some differences between REAL and FAKE stamps. These counterfeit stamps arrived on goods I purchased from eBay. They looked good until you start looking closer, then you realise how bad they really are.
When I looked into it I was amazed at the security features on such a simple cheap item that most of us wouldn't notice.
I hope you enjoy this video and remember it is a crime to knowingly use counterfeit or re-used stamps to avoid paying Royal Mail the full amount required for the postal service received. Anyone who does so may face criminal prosecution.
Many thanks, Vince.
It's always good when a seller admits to their fault rather than denying it. Being a person who has never dealt with any kind of postage stamps, this video sure was interesting to watch.
Thank you 👍
I’m a postie and I’ve been getting a lot of surcharge cards lately, and some have been for fake stamps. I delivered the item today and I really couldn’t spot that it was a fake and thought Royal Mail had made a mistake, but after watching this video it just shows the fakes are pretty hard to spot until side by side. Great video!
Great Video. I think one of the reasons that counterfitters that make stamps and bank notes don't put too much effort in is because they are not trying to fool the post offic or banks, they are just trying to fool the people who are buying or exchanging the fakes. Most people do not examine things like stamps or bank notes until they get pulled in a shop etc... One of the reasons when I visit the US I never use cash, just a disposable card.
A very valid point. I never thought of that. Thank you 👍👍👍👍
This was so interesting and proves that if ever want to move away from fix-it content, you have the presentation skills to bring any subject to life.
One major difference is the shape of the large perforations.Completely different shapes.
Yep I noticed that. The fake one was straight and the real one was curved.
I missed that Gerry, very noticeable as well. Thank you 👍👍👍
I'm an engineer within royalmail, and the equipment can spot fake stamps straight away, these then get send to an area of royalmail for them to be checked.
Do you remember when there was a craze of charity collections of old stamps?
This was organised by a criminal organisation that were attempting to clean and resell used stamps.
There loads more security features that you didn't notice, and I wish I could tell you, but I can't,
I find it fascinating that people go to great lengths to mimic stamps.
The new coded stamps do allow for automated tracking and cancelling they are all different.
If you were interested you could always ask for a tour of a mail centre.
Did you know that each machine in royalmail reads over 30 thousand letters an hour. In every language and can not only sort them into delivery location but puts them into the correct order of delivery.
1, 3, 5, 7, 9 cross road 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, etc
Anyway, I hope you find this interesting :)
Keep up the good work with the videos. I've been watching since the beginning.
Thanks David, I always wondered why people and organisations wanted old stamps...I thought it was to sell to stamp collectors 😂
I love the idea of hidden security features. I'm seeing more bar coded stamps arrive on my doorstep so I presume 'some' people are already working on a way to beat that. As others mentioned in the comments section, it looks like these are made to fool the public into buying them, rather than fool Royal Mail so I presume unknowing customers will still buy the coded stamps from eBay/Amazon if the fakers produce them.
Automated machinery like that is amazing. I watch How It's Made sometimes and it's sounds like the sorting machines would be well worthy of an episode.
Thanks for watching and commenting, hope you (Royal Mail) always remain many steps ahead of the counterfeiters 👌👍
Very cool and informative video! I am quite familiar with this on the American side as I worked at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (admittedly after they had privatized the stamps to companies, but still learned the process). The process of creating stamps is quite similar to how currency is made. Specially designed paper is created. Special ink is formulated which costs more per pound than most things on earth. Both have accounting similar to how banks keep records of how much money they have, and the paper+ink are typically delivered to manufacturing in armored trucks. The engravers that make the designs really are masterful artists - some of the best in the world. The plate making process for the dies take quite a lot of skill and must be absolutely perfect before printing. However after all that, once everything is setup, the economies of scale allow for printing billions of these at low cost per unit. All of this so we can lick a stamp, put it on a piece of mail, and send it to someone else. Quite remarkable once you are familiar with what goes into it. The uniqueness and cost of replicating all of the features and properties is the main strategy for deterring counterfeiting.
Went into this thinking why am I bothering clicking this, what is Vince thinking, this is going to be dull as dishwater. I was totally proven wrong, a fun and fascinating fifteen minutes. Genuinely very interesting and a lovely insight into a quite mundane, but vitally important bit of everyday life!
Years ago people used to put invisible sellotape over the real stamps so that you could wipe the franking stamp off and reuse them again and again
Great informative video. There was an abundance of fake scam ads for U.S. postage back in January on Facebook where I would see 20-30 new ads a day. So many people lost $$ that the USPS put out a video saying to be careful and that they NEVER discount postage. Sadly though, scammers will see this video as a way to improve their tactics.
Very interesting . When I was a kid I used to collect old US stamps . I loved the intricate details of the engraving . They were tiny amazing works of art under a little magnification . Never liked the newer stamps made with the more photo realistic process . I have no idea if they use similar anticounterfeiting measures in the States now since I don't actively collect stamps anymore and I never buy stamps either since everything now is metered and done online .
Did you notice the microprinting over the top of the Queen portraits compared to the rest of the stamp?
And the size of the red area is ever-so-slightly different between the reals and fakes.
The oval perforation is a more rounded shape.
Also, numbers 'source code' are the year of print, i.e., 2014, 2020 etc imprinted into the text as 14 or 20.
Vince, you must have had the 5p ones quite a long time lol!
Agreed, the oval perf is more rounded and easy to spot.
Well spotted, annoyed I missed the oval vs square as it is sooo obvious 🤣👍👍👍👍 I think they must be approaching 15 years old now!
I bought stamps from Amazon Mar 2022 5 x Large Letter 1st Class First Class Stamps Royal Mail Post Office. Says the seller is' Royal Mail Store.
Everything I have sent with those stamps have gotten there safely and never had anyone say they had to pay the postage. Thanks for the heads up Vince!
Interesting video, thanks. As another comment mentioned, similar processes to banknotes and actually passports,(my background) too.
Forgers, or counterfeiters in this case don't have the equipment required to replicate the safeguards. They do have access to UV ink which is commercially available, and they sometimes use that to trick people into thinking the UV reaction IS a safeguard, when actually, it's the absence of a UV reaction that's real in special paper.
The amount of information is amazing. The main diff I could most easily see was the elongated perforation notch, could notice that without zoom or lights. Notch is more curved along the long edges, the other just looks like a rectangle with the edges rounded off.
Well spotted 👍
Starting in the 1960s stamps from around the world started to be tagged in various fashions with invisible UV ink. This allowed the post office machine to center the letters, etc. For example, US surface mail were tagged green, while airmail was tagged red. Some UK & Canadian stamps from the period are worth a lot more depending on rarity of tagging pattern.
When checking postage, the first thing to do is check grab the UV light!
Interesting video. I don't think I've used stamps here in the US in a very long time. Most the time when I mail items it is over the cost of a stamp and I just got to the post office. The nice thing about living in a small town. P.S. I watched this while my wife was working, she would have never let me watch this on the TV. 😃
For a moment I was scared you wouldn't show them under the microscope, would have been a huge missed opportunity! Actually first thing I did with my microscope was looking at print. During my formal education I studied typography and the printing process overall, so at the time it just was the most natural thing to play with for me haha
The barcodes seem interesting assuming they're a security feature. I would imagine the personalised message feature is just a nice bonus, when they can them for franking they can look up and make sure they haven't been used before and that they've been paid for.
09:24 Not sure I want to lick myself, Vince!
This was an interesting episode. Previously having had a career in immigration, I had extensive training and experience in detecting forgeries.
It was exciting detecting and prevent fraud and illegal immigration both at port and in country.
This video did indeed bring back some fond memories!
Thanks again Vince!
Another difference you didn't point out, the oval cutout on the edge aren't the same.
Well spotted 👍👌
@@Mymatevince If you noticed on one its completely straight and the other has a a curve to it
Please forgive me but who the F buys stamps from Ebay or Amazon? Seriously??
I thought the same. However there are places in the UK with no post office anymore so maybe they are the target market.
I heard it was becoming a big thing as the price of postage has warranted a market for fake and reusable stamps,thats the issue.
Postage has become really expensive over such a short time.
off topic, you can have custom images on your stamps by going to certain postage sites. real fun thing to have done, especially if you're shipping craft from your small brand.
Very interesting. I used to work for a company that used security labels for shipping documents. They had holograms and similar features to these stamps.
I think the oval cut-outs are to stop you reusing stamps.
The notching on the stamp perforation is different where as the real one has a concave cut out and the fake is more of a flat cut out. Hard to explain but I think Vince missed that one. The large notch towards the bottom is different.
this is the most random thing i have seen all year, thanks Vince LOL
Thanks for the video. Never thought about counterfeit stamps, but I suppose with the cost of postage going through the roof, it was inevitable really.
Thank you Vince for a very informative video. I suppose the solution is to buy from a trusted vendor, ie the Post Office
For the counterfeits 3 of the most missed parts are Phosphor tagging, Iridescent overprint and the elliptical perforation, not all of the genuine stamps will show date or source codes, usually first version or prior to the security printing.
Thanks Vince now you've shown me all the secret bits my next batch of stamps will be even better👍
🤣🤣
I had a Christmas card a few days ago that I had to pay a surcharge for, so that's how I ended up here. I have to say that the stamp on my envelope (a normal 1st class one), assuming it IS a fake, is a MUCH better fake than the one in this video. It has the source code, the wavy ROYAL MAIL lettering, even the phosphor on it. The halftoning is way better than the fake you showed here, but I admit I'm not certain whether it's perfect or not, even though the details are pretty good. The trouble is that I have no old 1st class stamps left so I can't compare it with them. I've sent a complaint to Royal Mail but perhaps they'll tell me it is a fake after all. To be honest, I really wish they would put more detail on the "invalid stamp" label. When I saw that phrase, I thought they'd made a mistake. If they had specifically said "counterfeit stamp" instead, then I would have researched this first and probably not complained.
I added a 1st class stamp but the recipient had to pay for an invalid stamp I had added. Now my stamp is a different red from 2017, has phosphor bands and has a print error with the wavy royalmail starting on the white bottom perforations and ending short of the top red.
Well, it looks like mine was a fake. I spoke to the sender and he said one of his other recipients had to pay as well. He bought the stamps from Amazon, so he's informed Amazon and Royal Mail about the issue now. Hopefully he'll get a refund.
Ok, here's a topic I didn't think I'd see here :)
David Brent taught me that these are also legal tender.
So well done. It’s a true revelation ! Great work. Made my Friday evening> A great watch!
Good evening, a very interesting and informative video about counterfeiting postage stamps with the queen
you might think it's such a simple thing but what goes into it is way more then you might ever think
The glaring thing we notice is the proper ovoid perforation on the genuine stamps as opposed to the Phillips Red Leicester cheese gear (with missing teeth) of the fake ones...
Great video. I had no idea there were so many security features incorporated in a stamp.
Really interesting Vince. Thanks for taking the time to make this
The video we didn’t know we needed.. Great video!
Thank you for sharing this great interesting video I have learned a lot about stamps and how to make sure they are real or fake very clever Vince thanks for showing us the security features enjoy your weekend bro
I never had a clue they made fake Stamps
I'm amazed they put such little effort in, the background would have been easy to replicate and a high quality scan of a real one would have got the queen better but perhaps it's down to the printer and software, I've faked a few stamps for TV shows (period ones) so they were never up to such close scrutiny but I'd enjoy trying to replicate the real thing, have several ideas rattling round after watching this..... though I'll leave them as ideas to stay on the right side of the law lol
Slightly off topic but relevant ……I’ve never understood why when they introduced the printed off sticker when you take a parcel to be weighed at a PO that they needed to be so big?
The printed off sticker could be half or even quarter the size it is and save the PO a fortune in the paper quantity used?
Let’s imagine the yearly bill for the paper quantity used is £1 million then that could be cut down to £500,000 or even £250,000 just by making the stickers smaller , never understood why they needed to be so large?
We live in a country that imports half a million trees from Estonia to fuel our power stations. I think they have given up on saving paper
Old people? Primary user/consumer possibly, and stamp stickers may need to be bigger to more easily remove single item from bulk sheet? Maybe printing process requires larger ‘canvas’ on a sticker to achieve more granular detail than traditional stamp because of web (underlying paper/substrate) or QA/QC related issues for the adhesive and the need to ensure greater surface area to ensure stamps don’t fall off mid-journey?
Really good question with lots of possibilities, but probably real answer is “the boss said to make ‘em bigger”. That’s usually enough to justify most actions in an organization.
It is a great question David 👍👍👍
It can get annoying how big it gets, sometimes it is so big that on a small item it's a challenge to affix the sticker!
I''m sure you've already worked out the source code issue, it would be much like a serial number on a currency note, can't have all notes with same number obviously forgers would need to work out how to change the next print to a new number.
Really fascinating video, well that's my opinion, of this video.
So now I know how to spot fake Royalmail stamps.. as a Swiss citizien it's not so necessary to know It think but it was very interesting. I wonder now if the Swiss Post is doing the same effort for their stamps? Also the Royal Mail ones really look beatuiful tbh.
4:38 there is extra lettering over The Queen's head that appears transparent but reflective under the right light.
You guys still use stamps?
i would assume the fakers don't add things like source code since they are not trying to cheat the mail system, they are trying to CHEAT YOU!
A quick look on eBay shows that these fakes are still being sold, in fact if you put in "1st class large stamp", it's the first result.
Good call Vince
Each barcode is unique - blocking the re-use of them as they have been ‘marked’ as used so will pop out. Must say removing unmarked stamps from envelopes is not that hard 😂
Looks like an Aztec maze pattern on the real ones when you zoom in really close.
The thing I spotted instantly was the difference in typeface of the real and fake 'Large'. The forgers don't have to be too bothered about accuracy as once the stamps are sold, it's the buyer's problem. Stamps should never be cheaper than face value- the post office don't sell them wholesale!
Those bar codes will put paid to reusing unranked stamps once & for all. Amazes me that royal mail still gets used esp for parcels couriers work out far cheaper more often than not
True Yodel is £2.30 tracked but I think Royal Mail don’t loose as many plus reatail customers tend to just go to post office to post something.
The printing technology is different as well. You can clearly see the dithering and posterized effect on the fakes. Like currency, stamps are usually produced by ink and metal dies. Posterization is an artifact of printing using crap printers.
In effect, it was still cheaper to use the fake stamps as it cost the seller £3.50 rather than £4....Guess it depends on how much the stamps actually cost the seller in the 1st place.
Yessss a very valid point 👍👍👍👍👍
I think it was over £4.00 because there is signed for sticker on it £5.75 first class but you can post with yodel for £2.30 but they tend to loose stuff more
Thank your for putting your personal stamp on this sticky topic.
🤣👍
Awesome video! Thank you! Very very interesting. And I learned so much!
Would love a video on forgery.. Not breaking law just methods and counter measures.
Also the large perforation is more curved on the genuine stamps which is very obvious.
I bought a book of stamps in a corner shop in Shepherds Bush to post a package I had with me... I went round the corner to affix the stamps to the package and they just wouldn't stick! I took them back and was refunded but I always wonder whether they were fake and whether I should have taken them to a proper PO to check them. (The only other reason that occured to me was the heat in the shop which potentially could have degraded the glue over time, idk)
Did you mention the fact that the profile on the fake stamps is stretched horizontally? Her nose is therefore longer, the cheeks and neck are wider as a result. The whole portrait looks stretched out horizontally compared to the real stamp.
abotu 12 years ago I bought real stamps and used them to send a parcel to family and when it arrived RM claimed they were counterfeit! I bought them from my main post office!
Postmaster on the fiddle.
The large cutaway notch is different, ie, curved rather than oval.
The course stipples in the Queen pic looked sus straight away.
Fascinating. To the unwary eye, the fakes are quite convincing.
With the barcoded stamps: Royal Mail will be able to use barcode scanners to check the barcode has already been seen and used or not in a database, and probably they will add a feature to their app so people can do the same thing. Most letters are already being uniquely barcoded and scanned by businesses, it's called Mailmark franking machines. Basically barcoded stamps are just stickers with Mailmarks on them.
Maybe eventually they will get rid of the die cuts and watermark to cut costs, especially since stamp use has been down over the past few years because of online postage anyway.
However I doubt they would do that because it would make it even easier to scam older people who are the ones who use stamps most in the first place and probably don't have access to apps. And they're probably saving more than enough money not having to hire people doing what Vince is in the videos and checking if the stamps are real! On the other other hand, since barcoded stamps would make it impossible to make fake stamps that actually work, that wouldn't really be a problem would it? Although let's be real the stamps are going to go up in price every year like they always do, barcodes or not.
@George Brooke It makes me wonder whether the "No Value Indicated" (NVI) stamps (i.e. the "1st", "2nd" and large letter variants) would be a good investment since they would effectively be worth more every year!
“Impossible to make fake stamps that actually work” you say? Hmm, sounds like a challenge. Not sure how to hack these types of barcodes myself, but with criminals and other similarly situated people, they can be quite resourceful. Think about some of the skimmers seen on ATM machines and gas station dispensers, or check-out card readers. People really can come up with some quite remarkable scam techniques.
For stamps, perhaps the barcode on a fake stamp is not to trick Post Office, but rather to put malware on your phone and then they can collect all your personal data. Lots of ways to skin a cat.
From USA (cant disclose who I work for) but the font in 'Large' is also wrong. Take a peek at the a , g & e The circles inside of these letters are very hard to reproduce (because the die to make them are done by hand). A typical computer will create the one on the right.
You can have any shaped font on a computer, the issue is here they used the wrong one.
I saw the title and thought wtf is this, this is going to be boring. It seems i was very wrong hahaha
I'm 52 years old and never knew about any of this stuff.
a) There are (still) fake stamps?
b) You can buy stamps on Amazon?
c) The receiver have to pay!?
Heck?
All the more reason to buy postage direct from royal mail online esp if its eBay that's so much easier than messing about with stickers.
If it seems too good to be true.....
Stamps are almost currency so its a case of you can't buy a cheap £20 note on amazon so you can't buy cheap stamps either.
interesting to see you have problems with counterfeit stamps :) ... kinda thought it would cost more to get good one out... i bet you can feel the different royalmail "watermark" just by sliding finger over (i bet it has some "tactile feedback" :D )...
Great informative video Vince. 👍
Now this was a learning experience.
Very interesting and detailed video! What model of UV light do you have and where can it be bought? With thanks!
Very interesting, on the fake ones you can see the dots in the queen which is much cheaper printing than the genuine article. Must say in the real one the queen has a bit of a lump on her nose 😁
Wonder if the postage company is making any money on the penny stamps it looks like it costs more to make. Like the us coin penny and I wonder if us stamps have fraud protection also
For all spies out there, where do you still stick the micro dot. As in old black and white films, it's always under the Penny Black with the stamp stuck on upside down. Post Marked, from some obscure location in rural Scotland. Mr. Hanney......
Also, the oval holes on the real stamps are OVAL whereas on the fake ones they are OBLONG...
They should update the stamps every couple of years, the queen is not 29 years old any more! hahaha!
This didn't age well.
What microscope are you using? It looks awesome. I noticed not all UK stamps have this little dots, I tried with a national geographic microscope, but it's just horrible...
That's Amazon for you, half the tat on there is counterfeit.
I added a 1st class stamp but the recipient had to pay for an invalid stamp I had added. Now my stamp is a different red from 2017, has phosphor bands and has a print error with the wavy royalmail starting on the white bottom perforations and ending short of the top red.
Two of the last three things I've bought off ebay have had this issue. Absolute pain in the arse!
Fascinating! I dont think US stamps have any security features; as far as I know its just a simple sticker. Stamps are seldom used though, its typically the Pitney Bowes type code (like the new coded stamps you have)
They use the UV thing at least
Some U.S. stamps are cancelled invisibility. The eye can't see it but equipment can. They also have tagging and microprinting
Fascinating stuff!
Really interesting , thanks Vince
Just watched your video….I had no idea about this until today. I bought some stamps with barcodes from Amazon, put one on a card to a friend & she just told me she had to pay a surcharge for this very reason. I just looked at the rest of the stamps..there is no writing across the background at all! I tried the barcode & that does go to Shaun the sheep. 😞
surely if you pay less than the stamp is to buy from the post office it has to be fake
There are legitimate stamps priced lower than the PO. Earlier this year the pricing of stamps went up 10p, to make money you could buy thousands of stamps 3rd of April, and sell them for 5p more on the 4th
Also Costco used to sell stamps in bulk at (from memory) 6% under Post Office prices 👍
Goodness me. I cannot remember when last I licked a tasty stamp. 😄
Is it ok to lick something phosphorus 😂
Hmm. British stamps sure have gotten elaborate. I have some very old ones, and they're nothing like these, but I didn't look very close I have to admit. Really though, I think it won't be long before stamps are a thing of the past.
> I think it won't be long before stamps are a thing of the past
How?
Unless you think that couriers will totally replace the RM, I don't see any way you can prove postage has been paid without a stamp. Certainly not from home. If you go to the PO, yes they will print a label and use that, but if you are just sending some xmas cards or returning a signed document/original to the solicitor I don't think you will have much to use. IF you have a working printer and IF you have labels you could print one off from the RM site. But who typically has a printer these days? Let alone one that will be unblocked and printing properly the moment you need it.
My printer for example has not printed a thing for many years, the ink has dried up now and it will cost me £30 to simply swap the carts. As it is a multi function printer it is useful as a scanner.
Thus I think having a book of 6 or more pre-printed stamps that can be used over several years when you find you just need to have a stamp once in a while will be about for a long time to come. If however RM start collecting from the doorstep or other shops like couriers can you could just have a label printed. I just don't see it happening. You'd also have to see a total drop off of post box usage in favor of people going to the PO or shop to print off a label and affix for later collection, and even see the post boxes sealed up or removed. Posties are still everywhere emptying postboxes everyday.
Might happen one day but its certainly not "soon"
I think the number in the background is the last two digits of the year they were made.
Yes Michael, looks like you are correct 👍👍👍
Do they have any UV printing? Banknotes and credit cards have this. Edit. Yes just seen this 😀
the fake one looks like the entire thing is phosphorescent, at least the paper
One thing you didn't spot is the position of the queen's neck into her chin.
On the fakr her neck to chin is almost a right angle, on the real one her chin is pointing ever so slightly up
The die cuts on mine stayed on the stamp book. They are from the post office. Does that mean I can't use them?
in new zealand we must be more honest because l worked for a printing company and we used to print pre patd stamped envelopes, and there was no anti forging measures
I have a book of 1st class stamps here, which are genuine, but they dont have royal mail in the background, admittedly these stamps are very likely to be nearly 15 years old though, but under right lighting I can clearly see the two bands on the left and right and the image is in hi def.. just weird theres no 'watermark' for royalmail.