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Monday 28 December 2009

Secu - ripped


It was big news at the time, over the course of 2009 Royal Mail spent a fortune incorporating new security measures and changing methods of production into certain Machin products.

The reason for all the changes was , according to a R.M source to combat fraud and the re-use of their products.
To quote RM "These initiatives are part of the on-going development of security features for Stamps. The slits are designed to inhibit the removal of these Stamps for fraudulent sale and re-use."

Collectors have tried and tested many methods to remove these used security stmps in order to add them to their collections, some have found success I might add.

Anyway to cut to the chase, it seems that these changes above make not an iota of difference to post office staff. As you can see from the image, stamps with damaged security slits manage to get though the system with no bother at all.
So whats the point?
Thanks go to Johnfevs who posted this news and images to The Machin Forum .

5 comments:

cddstamps said...

Roy, Larry, excellent writings..

continue to really enjoy your work

Happy New Year.. Michael cddstamps

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Michael. We're glad you're enjoying the blog.

--Larry

Anonymous said...

These stamps do not look like they have been reused. The left-hand slits are intact and there's no visible evidence of them having been pulled off an envelope. I believe they were simply stamps that were damaged when the user peeled them off the original backing.

That said, I suspect that actual re-used stamps would indeed make it through the mails, as these have. Is there any evidence that Royal Mail has increased its surveillance, either automatic or manual, to try to spot fraud with these new stamps?

And can any eBay watcher tell us whether these new security stamps have put a dent in the offerings of batches of "unfranked" stamps?

--Larry

Johnfevs said...

Larry, when I posted about the security Machins, I didn't suggest that they were re used just that they had still got through the system with the security features missing. I would therefore suspect that reused stamps would also get through, just to clarify....Thanks...John

Machin Man said...

Thanks John, I did not say these stamps were actualy re used.

As you say I implied "that reused stamps would also get through"