Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

phc64
Community Member

I often purchase eBay lots of unused (full gum) Canadian stamps which I then use for postage. I usually purchase such lots for about 65-70% of the stamps' face value.

A listing from a seller from China caught my eye. This seller is offering brand new rolls of 100 'P' stamps for  C$23.13

After 'watching' the listing, the seller sent me an offer for 500 'P' stamps for C$86.71 plus C$8.15 shipping. (500 times 92 cents is $460, so including shipping the offer amounts to less than 21% of the stamps' face value).

I strongly suspect these are...ummm....self-produced stamps. To the Canadian stamp dealers on here: Is there any chance this is legit?

 

 

 

 

 

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

The pictures are likely pictures of the real stamps.

The stamps being sold are likely not real, the BIN wayyyy below face for "P" stamps is a giveaway.

Most likely when one has them in hand one will find out they are missing the tagging (it glows under ultraviolet light to tell the equipment there is a stamp on it). Generally the counterfeit stuff is missing the tagging. One never knows though, they may have gotten smart enough to put that on too.

Note that if one uses stamps without tagging, the equipment will identify the letter as missing postage which will at best slow it down until someone looks at it, if the someone who looks at it identifies it as counterfeit then you'll get a call from someone as using counterfiet postage is illegal of course...

I wouldn't ever purchase something like this from someplace like that, but one can't say for sure until one has it in hand.  The good news is that the MBG covers one if one wants to give them a try, the easiest way to know when one has them in hand is to check the tagging if one has a way of doing that of course (you need an ultraviolet light).

Addendum from looking at their feedback, it looks like stamps is a new offering from this seller, they've been selling disney products for a while (check the neutral feedbacks) and Canada and Sweden stamps are what's being offered. There's quite a lot of stuff being offered.

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

There were a spate of posts on dotCOM earlier this year about counterfeit Forever stamps (parallel to our P(ermanent) issues) being sold in booklets, mostly from Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast.

I would not be surprised if the counterfeiters are now selling Canadian, German, French, and UK counterfeits as well.

devon@ebay   Would you draw this report to the applicable Team?

 

 

@phc64  You may find your costs for mint postage rising soon. They are selling at auction (unsorted and sometimes in Annual Collections) for 55% of face.

https://sparks-auctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Sparks44Complete.pdf

Lots 1445 and on are postage.

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

Zero chance they're real.
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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

This is not a new thing this article is from 2020.

Convincing counterfeits of Canada’s 2020 nondenominated permanent-rate (currently 92¢) From Far and Wide coil stamps with horizontal serpentine die cuts that gauge 8½ (Scott 3212-3216) have been discovered.

The bogus stamps were first reported in a brief story in the March-April 2022 issue of the Corgi Times, the official newsletter of the Elizabethan II Study Group.

The fakes are believed to have been printed in China, according to the Corgi Times.

“Although the counterfeits do not have the characteristic underprinting, they do have the backprinting indicating the number of stamps left in the roll,” the Corgi Times reported.

Underprinting is a security feature added to the liner paper beneath the stamps....

https://www.linns.com/news/world-stamps-postal-history/counterfeit-canada-from-far-and-wide-coil-sta...

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

They will be counterfeits produced in China.

USA Forever stamps used to be the main target, but the crooks have been branching out to other country stamps.  Take a look at what else the seller has sold recently (using advanced search).   Might be a crooked seller or a hijacked Chinese seller account (China has had several big database breaches this year exposing information the police/government has collected on millions of citizens).

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

If it is too good to be true, it probably isn't...

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

mcrlmn
Community Member

"Is there any chance this is legit?"

Wow... and likely a waste of time to report.

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?

Actually, it is too good to be true.

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Seller in China offering new Canadian 'P' stamps at 21% of face. Any chance this is legit?


@reallynicestamps wrote:

There were a spate of posts on dotCOM earlier this year about counterfeit Forever stamps (parallel to our P(ermanent) issues) being sold in booklets, mostly from Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast.

I would not be surprised if the counterfeiters are now selling Canadian, German, French, and UK counterfeits as well.

devon@ebay   Would you draw this report to the applicable Team?

 

 

@phc64  You may find your costs for mint postage rising soon. They are selling at auction (unsorted and sometimes in Annual Collections) for 55% of face.

https://sparks-auctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Sparks44Complete.pdf

Lots 1445 and on are postage.


Hi @reallynicestamps! I will make sure to get this reported and thank you for tagging me in on this.

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