New Batch of Postal Counterfeits Appears; Here's What to Watch For
A brief listing of some new counterfeits and their distinguishing features ...
It should go without saying; nonetheless, I have to say it every time. There is no such thing as discount Forever stamps. Heavy discounts from face value mean the stamps — without question — are either stolen or counterfeit, and are almost certainly counterfeit. Feel free to repeat this as many times as necessary. Still, since our cultural moral compass seems to be guided by nothing deeper than the cheapest available price, millions of people (including collectors) are taken in daily by ads promising cheap Forever stamps — particularly as postage rates continue to rise rapidly.
But it’s not just recent Forever stamps being counterfeited in China and distributed widely in the United States. Most of the high-value stamps of the past few years, as well as some older issues, including semi-postals and even some going back 20 years, are now making their rounds in ads on social media and other venues. We’ll take a more detailed look at a few of these shortly.
Those 2024 issues that are now available as counterfeits include the new Love stamp (Jan. 12), $9.85 Pillars of Creation Priority Mail (Jan. 22), $30.45 Cosmic Cliffs Express Mail (Jan. 22), Year of the Dragon (Jan. 25), Constance Baker Motley (Jan. 31) and John Wooden (Feb. 24), with more no doubt on the way soon.
Other counterfeits that are fresh to the marketplace include a new version of the Coral Reefs postcard stamp; George Morrison; Piñatas, Snow Globes and Winter Woodland Animals convertible booklets; Osiris-Rex; Ruth Bader Ginsberg; and Life Magnified, to name a few. I’ve heard rumors that the $2 and $5 Floral Geometry counterfeits are here (to match the $10 one that appeared last year), but I haven’t seen them yet.
The biggest change is that the Chinese counterfeits are getting much, much more dangerous and convincing over time, to the point that even most postal personnel cannot effectively distinguish them from genuine stamps. There are two primary reasons for this.
The first is because the Chinese counterfeiters have embraced technology and continue to refine printing and processing techniques. Gone are the days of unconvincing, clumsy die cuts and relatively crude reproductions of modern stamp design. The color separation and dot screen pattern are now nearly as good as those created for the U.S. Postal Service and, in a few cases, the counterfeits actually look better than the genuine examples!
This brings us to the second point. As the USPS continues to cheapen its own stamp-issuing program with simple, high-contrast graphic designs and nothing but multicolor offset-lithographic printing, its stamps become much simpler to counterfeit. Even those experiments with foil die-stamping and other novelty inks have been easily counterfeited by the Chinese, as these are simply off-the-shelf types of technology.
Ironically, no lick-and-stick U.S. stamps have been counterfeited by the Chinese. But this is primarily because all Forever stamps are self-adhesive issues.
Let’s take a look at a few of these recent issues in a bit more detail.
2024 Love stamp
To the casual observer (even with a magnifying glass), the counterfeit is virtually indistinguishable from the genuine, other than the color is a bit more of a vivid red than genuine examples (below). A counterfeit is shown enlarged at center.
For collectors, the phosphorescent tagging is brighter on counterfeits, the backing paper is fluorescent (it’s dead on genuine stamps), and the die-cutting measures about 11.1 on a standard perforation gauge (rather than 11). These same diagnostics are true for the Snow Globes, Piñatas and Winter Woodland Animals booklets. A photo taken under shortwave ultraviolet light is shown below, with the brighter counterfeits at top.
New High-Value Stamps
The new high-value Priority Mail and Express Mail counterfeits are especially dangerous. The die cuts on both measure a near-perfect 10½; the tagging is very similar and even the microprinting on the counterfeits is now crisp and clear. In fact, on the new high values, the microprinting is even crisper than that found on genuine examples. Counterfeit microprinting from the Pillars of Creation stamp is shown below. Blurry microprinting used to be one of the absolute diagnostics of counterfeit stamps.
Enlarged images of both a counterfeit (top) and genuine (bottom) Pillars of Creation stamps are shown below for a comparison of details.
The appearance of new counterfeit stamps seems to have slowed a bit from the harried pace of last year, but the products that are turning up are far more dangerous than those found previously.
We’ll detail the semi-postal counterfeits in a future installment.
"I’ve heard rumors that the $2 and $5 Floral Geometry counterfeits are here (to match the $10 one that appeared last year), but I haven’t seen them yet"
Those have absolutely been counterfeited, and I have a spare set to trade.