Legal postage stamps can be issued only by the post administration of a corresponding country or by its authorized philatelic agents. Legal postage stamp serves as a way to pay for postage costs in a corresponding country.

The agent and the post administration cooperate during all the essential stamp creating stages including themes, designs, edition, denomination, release date and others. Philatelic agent offers only best quality postage stamps for its customers.

The difference between illegal and official postage stamps might be not visually visible because it concerns the authorization to produce postage stamps. If the agency does not have the contract with the post administration of the corresponding country or violate it, such agency cannot produce stamps for sale. Illegal stamps are not accepted as a way of payment for postal services.

Illegal postage stamps are harmful both to stamp collectors and philatelic agents so it is necessary to cooperate in order to eliminate such stamps from the market.

You can find the descriptions of legal stamp issues in the official websites and stamp catalogues of the authorized philatelic agents: Scott (USA), Yvert and Tellier (France), Michel (Germany). The lists of postage stamps might also be found in various philatelic periodicals.

Fake stamps ≠ illegal stamps.

Illegal stamps might be also called “bogus stamps” or “unofficial stamps”. Not that correct but similar phrases are “cinderella stamps”, “phantasy stamps”, etc. It is important not to confuse illegal stamps with fake stamps because they have different meanings.

“Fake stamps” might be also called “counterfeit stamps”, which means illegal copies of the official stamps (this activity is a criminal offence in a lot of countries). In most of the cases, a person interested in creating fake stamps would try to produce highly similar copies and present them as originals.

The phrase “illegal stamps” goes for private newly created labels which imitate usual forms, paper and other essential features of postage stamps and their producer fakes relations with a post administration whose name he/she is using without any agreement.

It is prohibited to produce illegal postage stamps because it violates the rights of a concerned postal administration and causes harm to a collector (unless the collector is familiar with the fact that the stamps are illegal).

The illegal activities of producing stamps without a contract with a concerned post administration cause a lot of troubles for the philatelic trade and stamp collectors.