Comment by thaumasiotes
20 hours ago
Something I find weird is that modern seals are mass-produced. There is no identification value, because anyone can trivially buy a seal that will make the exact impression of your seal.
(For personal seals. I don't know what company seals involve.)
The base is mass produced; and you are conflating 'vanity' stamps available as souvenirs with the registered official seals for banking and formal business. Anyone can trivially buy a stamp matching all the other toy stamps for that name, but are not official.
Official seals use uncommon font styles and are hand carved natural materials, such that each one has a unique microfeatures inherent to the wood, stone, or horn used, which develop unique wear and ink absorption characteristics.
These official seals are registered and become official for specific scopes of use; some are solely for banking and separate from the other uses like contracts and official filings: which prevents corporate partners and official channels from potentially exposing the banking seals.
The vanity type seals can be used for informal things like putting your name on homework or stamping a package delivery receipt for items of trivial value such as Amazon basics, but it is illegal to use mass produced stamps for official legal or banking.
At least in the Japanese context that I'm more familiar with, there's also levels to seals: you have (possibly mass produced) lower-value seals for low-value signatures, but you also have high value seals where an exact imprint is recorded with the government for high value signature verification, and physical possession of which is very carefully guarded.
I mean it's basically identical to a signature in terms of identification value, and, by the sounds of it, usage.
The only difference is that demonstrated in the described case, that the stamp is expected to be passed on to whomever is in authority, whereas we would never say "This CEO can't be ousted as he refused to relinquish his signature."
[dead]