Politics0 min ago
Fake Stamps
I heard on the news that the 'bar code' on stamps means that every stamp is unique, so they can spot the fakes. I have two questions. If the fakers copy a genuine bar code, how would the Post Office find it as a fake? While there may be millions of possible bar codes (isn't it a sort of QR code?), the Post Office must print millions of stamps, so will they run out of possible bar codes?
Answers
It has been alleged that some people have bought fake stamps from where they would think that the stamps would be genuine, i.e. convenience stores. This means (I think) that some stores must be buying stamps from online sources that must be cheaper than from the Post Office. These stores can be identified by the Post Office because their purchases of stamps from the Post Office must have dropped. Individuals who are buying stamps on-line must by now be aware that they are buying fakes. Their friends who are being charged £5 to collect their mail will soon inform them.
The re-use of unfranked stamps must be a small part of the problem for the Post Office. I suppose my question is really: How many permutations of black and white squares on the stamps are there?
I didn't know how many squares were in the stamps' QR codes. Auntypoll has provided the answer to the second part of my question. The number of possibilities must be close to or exceed the number of atoms in the world. But why don't the fakers copy a genuine stamp? How will the reader know that this stamp is the fake and not the genuine one? The reader 'knows' the QR codes of all the genuine stamps, but what if the purchaser of the fake uses it before the purchaser of the genuine stamp uses it?
As to stopping convenience stores selling stamps, that would hurt communities that don't have a post office nearby. The point of convenience stores is that they are ... convenient.
I once knew an English artist, a brilliant miniaturist, who on the morning a new stamp was issued would wait to buy the stamp, rush home and spend several hours making a perfect copy of it usually in watercolour. He would then, before the last collection of the day, fix it to an envelope & post it to himself to get it stamped as the first day of issue.
There are serious collectors of fake stamps, not that he would have sold his 'first day of issue fakes.'
I asked him if he was not worried that he could be arrested for fraud, & he said to me, "not at all, I always put a real stamp on the envelope as well."
Related Questions
Sorry, we can't find any related questions. Try using the search bar at the top of the page to search for some keywords, or choose a topic and submit your own question.