ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The price of a U.S. Forever Stamp is set to increase to 78 cents next week, up from 73 cents. This has led to a rise in counterfeit stamps being sold online, particularly on social media platforms, officials said.
So, News10NBC decided to purchase a set of stamps from the U.S. Postal Service and from a third party online to see if we could tell the difference. At first glance, it was hard to tell the difference. So we took the stamps to a professor at the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Insight from a U.S. Postal Inspector
Jerry Styers, a U.S. Postal Inspector, said, “Social media has been a problem in particular for us, Facebook has been a problem we’ve had to deal with because pop-up ads have shown up on there.”
Styers emphasized that the discounted stamps are fake. “You can’t buy a stamp for 10 cents that’s going to cost you over 70 cents at the post office,” he said.
Styers also said, “Most of the stamps being processed and sent through are being made in China. They’re sent over and all they basically are stickers.”
The U.S. Postal Service reported that in fiscal year 2022, it confiscated more than 340,000 packages with counterfeit postage and seized 7.7 million counterfeit stamps.
“Stamps are just like currency. They’re basic money,” Styers said. “So when we show up, it’s no different than if a secret service agent showed up and asked about the 50’s you were passing at the grocery store.”
An expert’s inspection
Dr. David Messinger at RIT inspected both sets of stamps once they came in the mail. He saw differences immediately.
“We can clearly see differences in the materials between the two stamps,” he said.
“The fact that the backing paper in the two stamps — this one looks kind of orangish and this one looks kind of purplish — in this visualization tells us that they’re different materials,” Dr. Messinger explained.
Under ultraviolet light, the discount stamps appeared fluorescent, while the USPS stamps remained dark.
News10NBC emailed the discount site for comment, and a week has gone by without a response.
What if I use counterfeit postage?
Postal inspectors warn that using or selling counterfeit stamps is a crime. Mail with counterfeit postage is considered abandoned and is neither delivered nor returned.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has disabled some discount stamp sites running ads. A spokesperson said they are working to keep questionable sites off their platforms.
The best way to ensure your stamps are legit, is to purchase them at in-person at a postal office or online at this link.
Here’s a tip sheet from the U.S. Postal Service for reference:
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