Legal postage stamps can be produced either by a post administration of a corresponding country or by its official philatelic agent. In case an agent does not sign or violates the signed contract with a post administration, it cannot produce legal postage stamps.

A post administration and a philatelic agent together decide on the essential questions regarding stamp production (themes, denomination, release date, edition, designs, etc.). Philatelic agent takes the responsibility of producing only high quality postage stamps.

Illegal postage stamps harm the activity of stamp collectors and official philatelic agents so we must cooperate in order to solve this issue together.

Post administrations, official websites and stamp catalogues of the authorized philatelic agents publish the descriptions and lists of legal stamps issues (Scott (USA), Yvert and Tellier (France), Michel (Germany)). Stamp lists also can be found in various philatelic periodicals.

Fake stamps ≠ illegal stamps.

Illegal stamps are also often determined by synonymic phrases “bogus stamps” or “unofficial stamps”. Phrases “cinderella stamps” or “phantasy stamps” are also used as synonyms to “illegal stamps” but these formulations are not exact. It is important to know that “illegal stamps” and “fake stamps” are not synonyms – their meaning is different.

Fake or counterfeit stamps are the illegal copies of postage stamps and their production is a criminal offence in many countries. Someone who is interested in producing fake stamps would seek to get the original postage stamps (or files from which they were produced), copy them and sell as originals.

Illegal stamps are newly created private labels that resemble paper, forms and other essential features of original postage stamps but the producer does not have a legal contract with a post administration under whose name the stamps are created.

The production of postage stamps without a contract with a post administration is illegal and produces enormous harm to stamp collectors (if they do not know about the illegality of the stamps) and the whole philatelic trade.