Cheap FOREVER stamps

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Wellsburg

Fly on the Wall
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My wife pokes around on Facebook Marketplace and found a seller offering 30 books of "FOREVER" stamps (total of 600 Postage Stamps) for $100.00 delivered. She got the delivery and everything is legitimate. We gave some of those away at Christmas to friends and relatives.
We are Old School and write checks and mail most of our payments, very few Auto-Pays or online payments, so we do use lots of postage.

I was surfing around recently on eBay and saw a similar deal. Four rolls of (100) FOREVER stamps for $50.00 delivered, Buy-It-Now.
$50.00 / 400 stamps = $0.125 each.
They just arrived yesterday. Seller has a Chinese name, but Charlotte, NC return address. Totally legit stamps.

Where are these people getting all of these postage stamps? Stolen from the post office or work? Makes you wonder.
 
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Maybe they are fake. People counterfeit coins and dollar bills, why not stamps? No Secret Service worries I suppose.

Are you looking online for a good deal on postage stamps? Is a substantial discount of up to fifty percent off an order of United States Forever® Stamps too good to pass up? If so, keep scrolling, they’re probably counterfeit. To ensure your trusted communication arrives at its destination without delay, the Postal Inspection Service wants you to be aware of–and avoid–phony postage.

The number of counterfeit stamps being sold from online platforms has escalated. Scammers peddle fake stamps on social media marketplaces, e-commerce sites via third party vendors, and other websites. Counterfeit stamps are often sold in bulk quantities at a significant discount–anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their face value. That’s a tell-tale sign they’re bogus.

Purchasing stamps from a third-party wholesaler or online websites can be unpredictable. You have no way to verify whether they are genuine or not. The Postal Inspection Service recommends purchasing from Approved Postal Providers™. Approved vendors can include legitimate “big box” or warehouse retailers who do provide very small discounts on postage stamps, but this is through resale agreements with the Postal Service.

Learn more about stamps and where to safely buy them at USPS.

REPORT counterfeit stamps and sellers here.

Counterfeit postage is a serious issue that can have significant financial impacts on you and the United States Postal Service (USPS). To help you protect yourself, and USPS, the Postal Inspection Service created a new counterfeit postage reporting process to provide you with an easier way to report fake stamps and postage.

Effective September 26, 2025, you can report suspected counterfeit stamp and postage fraud using the Counterfeit Postage Reporting System (CPRS) and select the Counterfeit Postage option.
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Got to be fake. They don't ever sell at a discount. The Post Office most certainly will investigate and likely would be interested in that Chinese name / producer.

Actually that's not true. Any you buy today will be a discounted price in a few months.
 
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Costco sells at a verrry slight discount, and you get cash back.
Ebay will sell lots of lick-and-stick at a discount from old collections but it is too much work for most and not “forever” stamps.
 
Took one of the rolls of 100 stamps over to the post office earlier today. Local postmaster told me that they are good, no problem.

He also mentioned another customer had a similar conversation with him recently. Evidently, they had bought several hundred FOREVER stamps at 50% face value from eBay.
 
There's the REMOTE possibility that these were stockpiled, or a deceased family member had purchased and stored them. Now the listing poster just might want to be rid of them.

The last time I bought stamps was seven years ago - in a FOREVER small book. I dunno (too lazy to look) maybe, thirty?

I still have most of them. Nobody mails personal checks to pay bills anymore. Even my landlord, a REIT, is trying to force all us old people here (I'm one of the youngest at 68) to pay using a contracted "Rent Portal."

You know, where the website reaches into your bank account, and pulls out the money. With no control from the "owner" of the bank account.

So I write a rent check every month - the only one - we still have an on-site drop for it. Paying various other bills? I can just instruct my bank to EFT it to the power company, the VA, the insurance company, whatnot. There, it is under MY control - I don't like it, but it's easier, it's inevitable, and I have some management over it.

But, to the stamps. Might ask the seller what is the story on those. It could be a reasonable deal.
 
I suppose could have been someone who stockpiled a bunch.... Seems doubtful.

Perhaps just more fraud / money-laundering through China at US taxpayer expense. USPS has been awful lately. Package went from Kansas to NJ and back to Kansas again.
 
Hummm…
A fellow I know, spent a 'few' years in prison told me they used postage stamps for money in there.
You wanted to buy pot, you paid for it in postage stamps. Any other drug, more stamps. You got money in an account from prison work or from someone on the outside. You could use that money to buy stuff in the commissary like cigarettes, soda, candy and postage stamps.
The guy selling drugs would send the postage stamps home in a package. The people at home would sell them on the street for cheap, ½ price or so, and buy more drugs to smuggle in to seller.
 
Bottom Feeder said:
Hummm…
A fellow I know, spent a 'few' years in prison told me they used postage stamps for money in there.
You wanted to buy pot, you paid for it in postage stamps. Any other drug, more stamps. You got money in an account from prison work or from someone on the outside. You could use that money to buy stuff in the commissary like cigarettes, soda, candy and postage stamps.
The guy selling drugs would send the postage stamps home in a package. The people at home would sell them on the street for cheap, ½ price or so, and buy more drugs to smuggle in to seller.
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They probably had to quit using cigarettes for money.

Tobacco-free PRISONS, FFS.
 
Voodoo said:
I suppose could have been someone who stockpiled a bunch.... Seems doubtful.

Perhaps just more fraud / money-laundering through China at US taxpayer expense. USPS has been awful lately. Package went from Kansas to NJ and back to Kansas again.
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I was talking with a low-level manager about this - why it took a week to get a Certified package from a law office in town.

Used to be, they'd sort locally. Now they just truck everything to a sorting center - where the parcels are all photographed (fer safety, dontcha know) and THEN routed to where they are going. With gypsy non-USPS truckers doing the moving - companies like Ten Roads Durka-Durka, which saved so much money by hiring Instant Democrats, they went broke.

I expect in a few years we will HAVE no Postal Service. Ship FedHex, FuddrelRepress, or some Bezoszon service.
 
KnowWhy said:
Use a staple?
Actually i use a glue stick to seal the letters and some of those stamps
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You're spoiled.

I remember having to lick those stamps. And envelopes, too. And the glue on those window envelopes, tucked inside the electric bill...tasted lousy. (Thanks for nuffin, Niagara-Mohawk Power Corporation!)

When adhesive stamps became OPTIONAL - at a surcharge, I think, around 1987 - I thought it was the neatest thing ever. No more worrying about whether the clerk selling the stamps at the PO used the wash basin after finishing up in the john. Just peel off and paste on.

For that matter, the Post Orifice took forever to figure out the concept of Forever Stamps. I had, I think, mentioned the idea to an aide to my Congress-cretin, Stan Lundine, at a county fair booth when they were looking for input. That would have been about 1977. Why not just mark the stamps FIRST CLASS or whatever, and sell them for what the post office NEEDS? Instead of making us frig around with 1-cent, 2-cent stamps every six months when they'd jack postage.

FINALLY, thirty years later, they did it. With a really stupid name. Just about the time the InterWebZ obsoleted most letter-writing.
 
They could be stolen. You know the stellar reputation of the USPS. OR if a third party prints them they could be over runs.
 
I think the Government Printing Office does stamps.

(One of the oldest government bureaucracies - it's much more than a customer window in a basement somewhere)
 
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