Short answer. Only if you meant to use them. Article 176 of the Revised Penal Code punishes possession of stamps, dies, marks or other implements for counterfeiting or falsification, but the second paragraph applies only to a person who holds them with the intention of using them. Innocent possession is not the offence.
What the law says
Any person who, with the intention of using them, shall have in his possession any of the instruments or implements mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, shall suffer the penalty next lower in degree than that provided therein.
Revised Penal Code, Article 176 — Tools For Falsification. Read the full provision →
Making the tools and holding them are treated differently
The article covers two acts and punishes them unequally. The heavier one is committed by a person who makes such instruments or brings them into the Philippines — stamps, dies, marks or similar implements intended to be used for counterfeiting or falsification. The lighter one is committed by a person who merely has them in his possession, and the law expressly drops that penalty one degree lower. The logic is straightforward: manufacturing or importing the equipment puts it into circulation, while holding it is a step closer to the crime but has not yet supplied anyone else with the means to commit it.
Intent is the whole battleground
For the possession offence, the statute inserts a phrase that decides most real cases: the holder must have the implements with the intention of using them. A printer who owns embossing equipment, an engraver with a workshop full of dies, a collector holding old seals, or an heir who inherited a box of stamps is not committing this crime simply by owning the objects. Intent is rarely admitted, so it is usually inferred from the surrounding facts — where the items were hidden, whether blank official forms or partly finished documents were with them, whether the holder had any lawful use for the equipment at all, and what he said when they were found.
The penalty, updated in 2017
For making or importing the implements, the punishment is prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods with a fine that may reach one million pesos. That ceiling is the figure fixed by Republic Act No. 10951 (2017), which revised fines and property values throughout the Revised Penal Code, and it is the current law. Older copies of the Code still circulating online print far smaller amounts for this article; those figures are obsolete. For the possession offence, the imprisonment drops one degree lower than the penalty for making the implements, which is why the distinction between manufacture and mere holding is worth arguing carefully.
If tools were found in your possession
This charge is often filed together with a falsification or counterfeiting charge, and sometimes on its own after a search. Two practical points matter. First, the objects seized must actually be instruments intended for counterfeiting or falsification, not ordinary printing or craft equipment that could theoretically be misused. Second, how the items were found can be as important as what they are, since evidence obtained through an unlawful search may be challenged. Nothing about the outcome can be promised in advance. Say nothing beyond identifying yourself, do not sign an inventory or a waiver you have not read, and take advice before giving any statement about why you had the items.