Washington Head Perf. 8.5 Coil - A Fake?

Found this stamp mislabeled amongst a bunch of Washington Heads and upon checking it seems to be perf. 8.5 (Scott 412?), however, the Scott catalog also mentioned many fakes by fraudulently perforating an imperforate stamp.

I think that maybe what's shown here. The left and right sides certainly do not line up right in my opinion. What do you think? Is that what is presented here?

Agree fake, looks like a #408 that has been perforated, being both 408 and 412 are flat plate, both are single line watermarked and both can be dark green. The straight edges don't look real straight as well.The top looks scissor cut between the s and t and the bottom looks a bit wavy as well. That besides the funky looking perforations.

Have you looked at it under a microscope? Does the cancel penetrate the edge of the paper at the perfs or are they clean as being cut after being cancelled? I don't know if the perfs were known to not line up but I imagine it could be possible.

The 8.5 coil spaces are blank in my album, so all above is just my guess.

Thanks for your evaluation. It is more or less what I initially thought.

I do not have a microscope, but here are hi res images of both the left and right perforations showing the postmark extending to the end of the stamp. I'm no expert, but the postmark seems to look okay:

These as with the canadian admiral rarer perfs are so well faked at times. Generally the forger takes small tweezers and lightly puuls the fibers on the tips of the perfs to mimic natural tearing . On yours it seems there is pulling inside the perfs as well likely to mask any cuts where the cancel hits the edge. However that is playing devils advocate and leaning that way mostly because of the offset from one side to the other. I would have a tough time buying it but also wouldn't rule it out completely as being legitimate. So important to haave pairs but it could fill a hole temporarily with a ? beside it.

On the flat plate coils, if the perfs line up exactly, it's probably fake. The perf pins, the way I understand it, all operated separately, so there's little chance that all would line up exactly.

Per Martin Armstrong's W-F book, the flat plates need to be between 24.75mm to 25.2mm from top edge to bottom edge on the horizontal coils, and 21.5mm to 22mm on the vertical coils.

If the stamp is shorter than 24.75mm, it's been trimmed. Best bet would be to first measure the size of the stamp from top edge to bottom edge.

Hope this helps..Ray

Thanks. Looks to be about 24.5 mm to 25.0 mm which roughly fits the coil measurement of 24.75, right? (It was hard to get the ruler and stamp to exactly line up on my scanner.)