These sellers do one sale through FakeBay, get the contact details of the dopey buyers, and pump them endless repeat orders totally under the radar with no fees.  So if $A2 million of ebay sales have been traced, you can BET ten times more was actually sold.  The LOSERS are of course legitimate mail users like you and me, who all pay HIGHER fees to subsidise the millions of parcels that AP cheerfully deliver using forged or stolen satchels.

AP and the Feds have known about this for years, and grind along at a snail's pace as the time lines show.  FakeBay has been flooded with them for years, and nothing much happens in there of course, as eBay make money from it all, fakes or genuine.  They do not give a hoot.  This stuff has been netting sellers far LESS per piece after ebay fees, than Post Offices pay “wholesale'' for it - and the geniuses at AP have taken several years to wake up to that simple fiscal reality.                                              

The Orange Registered labels here cost about $A4 each, and the parcel and Express satchels are into double figures, so it is not rocket science to set, and only accept, codes that are unique, and not easily crackable.  Sender gets caught on the spot, and THEN the Feds get from him info on who sold him the fakes, and this is nipped in the bud.

Serve notice on eBay that they have a role to play as well.  It is clearly IMPOSSIBLE for these to be sold below LPO cost price in vast numbers - if legitimate.  I got this Registered letter shown nearby and it shows the correct style of label.  If they cannot make TWENTY FIVE Alpha/Numeric combos, combined with a unique central QR codes, 100% secure, they need to sack the team involved, and get in new ones.  It is DEAD simple to do.

Australia Post seem too focused on handing out free $10,000 Gold Cartier watches to all the big shots, and back slapping, instead of getting them working on stemming $20-$50 million or so of red ink losses from clear fakes, for which no-one in there can work out a secure number system for tracked products.  It is pure Monty Python stuff.

So does anyone think the current criminal charges and the possibly TWENTY year prison terms will deter future spivs on Ebay?  Sadly, not on your life.  I saw a site selling apparent mint Australia stamps for postage at a low % of face value. In huge quantities.   And stupidly offering stamps in peel and stick rolls that were never issued that way etc by Australia Post.  Durrrrh.

As I reported in a column a year or so back, this material can be ordered from Alibaba online site in China for as low as ONE CENT apiece in bulk buys of 20,000 pieces.  The satchels were still on offer the day I typed this, on the giant Alibaba site, being described thus, and using the photos shown nearby  - "Custom 500G - 3Kg Packaging Colored Red Yellow - Australia Parcel Postage Satchel - Express Post Satchels - Shipping Mailing Poly Mailers"

Remember that the lookalike images they show today on the web you see here are to try and deter the Feds.  What was imported in the 2.3 ton shipment can be seen on the AFP seizure images and video - have the EXACT appearance as artwork as the current PO designs.  All with full tracking and scanning QR code boxes etc, and serial numbers and tear off tabs etc.  $20 value for 1c.  Nice work.

The Feds must be totally asleep at the wheel for not closing these sources down.  The current listing for these on Alibaba China is tinyurl.com/1c-APO   Feds seized 2.3 TON of them in the current court hearings.  Australia Post too, must be dozing off as usual - SURELY they can devise unique number sequences that means hackers cannot replicate them?  Cannot be rocket science.                      

The dopes who buy this stuff on eBay etc, and turn up at a PO and get told all their stamps/envelopes are invalid and forged, and PO Security will be in contact, is the way to stop this DEAD!  Or when the lack of proper “tagging” is detected at mail centres on the totally forged stamps, you will get sprung for sure.

The other common ebay scam of course here and overseas, is selling 1000’s of NO GUM genuine stamps, that have been soaked off kiloware etc, that were not originally cancelled, or were cancelled, and those cancels have been bleached off - a simple home kitchen project.  Getting $700 per 1000 pieces tax-free is a nice week’s wages, and makes this a widespread cottage industry.  In the UK, prison sentences were recently handed down for that, as reported here.

Most stamp dealers globally do good business selling parcels of mint full gum GENUINE stamps for well under face for postage, and they sell well.  I mostly do packets of $1,000 face for $A750, and I make a few bucks, and the buyers also save $250 LEGALLY!  I get streams of material from Estates, mint block collections and so on, PO packs and albums and booklets, so it works out well.

Armies of folks are running eBay mail order type businesses from home in these COVID days, and posting out things that cost many $$’s a sending.  If a packet costs $20 to mail, charge the client $25 “post and pack” and if those $20 of stamps on parcel come from a dealer at $15 cost, you MAKE an extra $10 profit on each parcel - more profit than you make on the goods inside, in very many cases!  

Often those eBay buyers leave glowing feedback - “really pretty stamps used on package” etc.  Oddly, most non-collectors really ENJOY getting a range of real stamps, in this era of worthless white labels, and plastic pre-paid mailing bags!  Post Offices these days here seldom stock any stamps other than the current boring $1.10 base value, so having a selection of older REAL stamps on hand, in full sets is pretty savvy.  AND saves you 25%.

EVERY reader of this article, globally, hopefully uses only attractive STAMPS on ALL their mailings, and anyone that uses a plastic pre-paid bag to me, or a worthless PO white label, when I am paying the postage, hears about it long and hard and forcefully - and I hope all buyers take such a firm stand on that.  NO excuse at all for not using stamps among us.

The used se-tenant strips 5 shown nearby I used on a client parcel.  Older issues of course, but retail value even when USED is a ton more than the $A15 face value, and my PO generally uses neat cds cancels like these if asked nicely.  So a no brainer really for the buyer, and the seller, who has clients who appreciate it.  Many buyers regularly add images of their frankings from me here - tinyurl.com/GlenFU

Often heavy domestic parcels of stockbooks or Hagners or albums etc are $50 a parcel these days, and overseas are often more like $100, and I know many clients choose to order off me if goods price is around the same.  Getting $50 or $100 of neat cancelled, philatelically valuable franking, is really a deal breaker on heavier sendings.  Buyers often sell the $50 frankings on ebay etc for more than they paid! 

Every country has real stamp dealers who offer legal franking like that under face from collections etc, and it is well worth looking into buying a little of it for your stamp den, if you send a bit of mail.  Post Offices do not have it any more, and taking in your mail cleverly pre-franked, they will cancel it for you.  A nice full set of commemoratives is just as easy to use on mail, as a worthless $5 or $10 definitive etc. 

Australia Post comes up with some nice visual surprises at times, and their art department I must say really is top class, producing some stunning material. They have been consistently good in my view for decades, and I am sure the faces in there change often, but the creative ideas and great designs continue.  A very recent issue is shown nearby, that almost no-one seems to have heard about.

“Australia Fifty Years of FDC” was a special Gold Foil Postmark numbered Limited Edition of 150 sets, of *28* different covers, with 28 different stamp issues.  The Official Australia PO Decimal FDC’s were first introduced in 1970.  The early ones were largely ignored by collectors, and sold in tiny numbers, and I sold a 1970 30c Captain Cook only this month for $A300, see image nearby  - they are still scarce and popular, with high catalogue value.

This new collection comprises 28 special covers, that feature a selection of stamps from 2020, and all 28 covers feature a special and rather attractive Metallic Gold Foiled postmark.  Face values of the stamps run up to $3.30 each.  Covers come with a classy matching artwork band encasing them, to the cover cachet design, also in a classy gold look. 

The UNIQUE Train/Railway 1970-2020 se-tenant mini-sheet is clearly a key piece on its own, being a popular TRAIN topical, and limited to a really minuscule 150 numbered pieces globally.  The 5c Standard Gauge Train is the exact 1970 issue, from the year the PO started making cacheted Decimal era FDCs. 

The cancel on the Train Sheet is certainly the First Day Issue of that, as the only way it ever occurred was in this set.  These sets of 28 sold out very fast at Australia Post at the high asking price, and most collectors globally had no idea these existed.  Even to the leading FDC collectors here - two of whom bought sets off me this week.

Serious stamp collectors need these too - as buying this cover is the ONLY way to source this unique and unheralded Miniature Sheet.  I bought a few sets 28 as it was a no-brainer they’d be highly sought after, once collectors heard about them.  They are still only a few dollars apiece, and would be a brilliant ebay seller group to split up into 28 numbered lots singly - will do very well I think, as are loaded with topicals etc.

A very pretty set I am sure you’ll agree, but the gold foil metallic cancels on them do not flat-bed scan well - I tried to take one with my camera to try and capture the metallic shimmer of it all.  Did not quite work out sadly!  Anyway, something a bit different and interesting, and at 28 different in the numbered set, will near fill a FDC album on its own.

Hard to believe it is FIFTY years since the Post Office started making official decimal era stamp FDC’s.  I remember as a kid in high school going to buy the 1970 Captain Cook, and I also had the savvy to cut up a mini sheet, and affixed the 6 imperf singles to one.  That one is long gone - should have kept it - have never ever, seen another!

All readers of this article have their own personal views on the most attractive stamp designs of all time.  Oddly, most polls I have read on that topic have voted on pre-war steel engraved recess printed stamps etc - I do not recall any offset printed modern stamps ever being among them!  I guess that says a lot.

It was painted by MacWhirter in 1887, in a small farmhouse near the Scottish town of Callendar, (not “Calender” as American sources incorrectly refer to it as) so the scene is actually of Scottish cattle in the central Highlands of Scotland.  So much for being iconic cowboy American, “Yankee Doodle” open plains cattle of the western plains!

The work of art had been used in advertisements for an American cattle company, who used it widely without permission.  After the stamp was printed, USPS officials learned with horror that the painting was the property of British Lord Blythswood.  An official apology was issued through the offices of the British Ambassador, and it appears all were satisfied with the outcome.

The $1 Trans-Mississippi stamp was designed by Raymond Ostrander Smith, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s chief staff designer, who also was responsible for the equally pretty 1901 Pan American set 6, and the superb Newfoundland John Cabot set 14 of 1897.  The $1 Cattle stamp features the same outer border as the rest of the values of the set. 

Unlike the long and massive face value 1893 Columbian series, the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition commemorative stamps did not include the name or dates of the event being commemorated.  Instead, each stamp features a caption with the name of the photograph or the (alleged!) painting upon which the design is based.

Stamp collectors weren’t concerned with the accuracy of the design. “Western Cattle in Storm” is often referred to as the most beautiful stamp ever issued by the USA.  Especially in USA based polls!  In addition to being visually appealing, the stamp is also quite expensive of course, and mint or used copies cost quite serious money as we know.  

The Trans-Mississippi commemorative stamps were printed by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington.  The original plans called for the full series to be printed in bi-color.  A red frame, with a black vignette (i.e. central design) was planned for the $1 “Western Cattle in Storm” stamp. Original plate proofs exist of these.

However, the Spanish-American War from April to December 1898 strained the resources of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which was overburdened by the demand for revenue stamps to fund the war.  The Trans-Mississippi commemoratives were hence printed in a single color to save money and time, with the $1 denomination printed in black ink.

After the tumultuous Civil War ended in 1865, the USA was nearly broke.  To provide funding for the 1898 Spanish-American War, Congress authorised taxes on a wide range of goods and services.  These included various alcohol and tobacco products, tea, and other amusements.  New Taxes were also added to various legal and business transactions - such as Stock Certificates, bills of lading, manifests, and marine insurance etc. 

The sunken “USS Maine” then at the bottom of Havana Harbour, featured on 12 of these USA revenue stamps, issued in different colours and values, to raise the War Tax basically, and I am certain every kid’s stamp album on this planet had at least one these Maine stamps proudly affixed inside!  To this day, they remain cheap, so mega millions or billions must have been sold.  

To pay these tax duties, the revenue tax stamps were purchased and affixed to the taxable item, or a respective certificate.  There are 12 stamps in this "1898 USS Maine" ship issue, which occur in denominations ranging from ½c to 80c, and printed on double lined watermarked paper. Two types of perforations were used - rouletted, and 'hyphen' shaped perforations.