Department Of State Five Dollar O69 Help Needed

half a year ago a bought two stockbooks at an auction in the Netherlands. Today I found at the last page a five dollar stamp from the state department. As a layman in this area the stamp looks nice to me, but when I saw the value a could not believe that such a stamp is to be found in a stockbook that I bought for approx. $120

can you give me advice how I can verify that this is a genuine stamp.

Wow, quite a find. I can't think that it is counterfeit, and it's definitely not a pen cancel. I'm sure some of our Revenue collectors will pipe in very soon. Congratulations on the great find!

If you look carefully under the word Department, you will see the small letters FACSIMILE,

Pagoda

Pagode,

you are right. should have seen that by myself

Thanks for your help

Checkout this ebay reference:

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Fake-dollar...57299/g.html

Here's an ebay listing for a facsimile set of "mint" stamps (with faults) of the $2, $5, $10 and $20 values:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/U-S-OFFICIA...251324009679

There are collectors who are interested in facsimiles/fakes and the stamp may have some nominal value to them.

Frankly, I think there must be a story behind these stamps and who first marketed the facsimiles/fakes. Maybe someone specializing in Back of the Book material can enlighten us...

wt1....These FACSIMILIES were originated in Germany. They are a product of the Senf Brothers, Louis & Richard. They firm was Gebruder Senf in Leipzig, Germany. They were stamp dealers and publishers of philatelic material and periodicals. The printings were very good, but were never meant to deceive. The US stamps were distributed beginning in 1885. They began with newspaper stamps....they were popular since at the time federal regulations did not allow postmasters to sell newspaper stamps to the general public. Collectors had an opportunity to fill in expensive stamp spaces with in-expensive, but nice looking, facsimiles.

It is quite attractive. Thanks for sharing that great info, Kevin.

kevin504: Thanks for that history lesson on these facsimiles. I tried to look up further details on the internet but most US illustrations seem to relate to their Newspaper Stamp facsimiles. One site mentioned that they were producing these facsimiles more than a century ago -- from the 1870s to the 1890s. Apparently they were quite prolific in reproducing facsimiles of rarities from many countries around the world.