How to spot a fake Royal Mail stamp

What colour is the logo?

If you have bought individual stamps, this step won’t apply to you. However, when purchasing a book of stamps or even a sheet of stamps, find the Forest Stewardship Council certification.

All genuine Royal Mail stamp books and sheets will have the FSC logo. What is important to check is the colour of the logo. 

Royal Mail introduced the new purple colour scheme for first class stamps when they introduced barcoded stamps in 2022. The barcode colour and the stamp both match, Royal Mail being the only postal service in the world to use a purple barcode. 

This fact was well publicised at the time of their release, and some counterfeiters have overcompensated by making the FSC logo and the barcode next to it, which you will find on the back of a book of stamps, also purple. On a genuine book of stamps however, these will be turquoise. 

Where did you buy your stamps?

The reality is criminal organisations have become very good at producing forgeries. Ian Billings, a stamp expert with more than 60 years of experience, conceded: “They’ve upped their game. 

“It was much easier before the barcoded stamps were introduced because [counterfeits] had so many errors but they are very good now. Every aspect of what these forgeries have got are better than they used to be.”

It’s a fact which becomes clear when looking at the official Royal Mail guidance for spotting a counterfeit stamp. The vast majority of the advice revolves around where you purchase the stamp rather than easily identifiable flaws in a stamp because counterfeiters are continually getting better at producing forgeries.

Royal Mail believes sheets of genuine stamps are being shipped to China where criminals are able to effectively copy and paste these sheets on a vast scale to produce forgeries. 

Royal Mail says it has taken down more than 300 suspicious listings for stamps online in the past year including some sold on Amazon and eBay. 

Royal Mail insists its systems are not faulty and customers can be confident purchasing stamps from the Post Office or through the Royal Mail website if choosing to purchase stamps online.