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Photo postal stamps are a fairly new form of USPS stamps. Basically the United States postal service allows you to print your own postage at home, plus its possible to customize it with your own photographs!
Photo postal stamps are a legitimate form of postage, and they have several security measures in place to prevent people printing their own postage for free. The photo stamps that you print from your computer have barcodes on them which include information about when the stamp was created, and the serial number of your software program.
Fraud with Online Postal Stamps
If you just print out something that looks like a postage stamp and try sticking this onto your letters, it will be rejected. This isnt always the case though, sometimes things slip through the net. In 1990, a cartoonist known as Garry Trudeau published a stamp album featuring over 140 stamps that were not legal postage. Many readers of this album tried sticking them onto letters and mailing them to themselves and some of these people succeeded.
People do still try sticking these novelty postal photo stamps to their letters with varying degrees of success. Its unclear whether people do this intentionally to try and con a government organization, or whether they do it thinking that its legitimate postage for free.
Art Stamps - Get Creative with your Photo Postal Stamps!
Some people even make their own stamps with various subjects, depicting famous fables, people, and sometimes controversial figures. Some of these stamps, although they are technically illegal, are worth over $2,000 with a post mark.
Even though these stamps are collectable, the USPS considers such activity postal fraud. The artists producing these stamps have been investigated on several occasions. It is considered an offense to produce illegal postage, dont think youll get away with it because its art because you wont.
We have looked at illegal photo postal stamps, however if you order them from a legitimate company then they are perfectly legal. You have two choices when looking at buying personalized postal stamps. You could send your digital images to a company and they will produce a minimum of a sheet of your postage stamps.
Alternatively there are some new services offering online postal stamps. With some of these you can print just one stamp at a time. These work just like a franking machine, you dont even need a separate label, you can print the stamps directly onto your envelope.
You can use photo postal stamps to celebrate endless special occasions. They are perfect for weddings, births, and even business credibility. If you are inviting people to your wedding, then a well, posh invitation could be of great interest. You could send it with one of your photo postal stamps featuring both you and your fiance.
Photo postal stamps can make any letter seem much more impressive. They are also useful for marketing purposes for any striving online or offline businesses. A photo stamp would make your logo stick in someones head for quite some time, giving that lasting impression.
Remember dont create illegal postal photo stamps, this is considered a serious offense and can get you locked up for a maximum of 5 years! Its not art, its postal fraud! A bit of reason and logic will go a long way.
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