Clueless Dealer, Yes, But Is It Worth Something Anyway?

Like many of you, I continue to be occasionally surprised with the constant mis-identification of great stamps by "experienced" dealers.

This one, however, seems far too blatant. Downeast Stamps of Bangor, ME is listing, for dramatically less than the $11,000 catalog value, this beauty. The obvious counterfeit SC 39, described as "large year, reperfed all around, many missing perfs, pen cancel ??, well centered space filler."

"Large year"?? WTH??

Anyway,I've seen this CF before, but it's not listed in Scott. Does anybody have any more info on this in particular?

http://stampauctionnetwork.com/de/de3043.cfm

I don't have anymore info on it, but that is ugly counterfeit. Regardless I enjoy collecting some counterfeits/fakes but this one is so bad I don't think it's worth 100$. Dealer should be ashamed for not listing as a fake in description

should be "large Tear"
just a typo.

AHAH! "Large tear." Now that makes sense. Apologies for not figuring that out. Thanks JB

Ugly can be beautiful. I kinda like it, but I don't know the story behind it.

In the revenue world, most of the counterfeits are nonphilatelic, i.e., their purpose was not to fool collectors but instead to avoid paying taxes. With respect to the 1st issue revenue counterfeits, they tend to be worth MUCH more than the real stamps. For example, the Hart L. Pierce counterfeit of the 1-cent Proprietary (R1c), the actual stamp catalogs less than $1, but the counterfeit is a $250-500 item. The $3 Manifest counterfeit is well over $1,000.

I would assume this is a "philatelic" fake with fake cancel...to fool a collector! I consider this stamp the holy grail for those trying to put together a US used collection 19th century. Perhaps others would disagree. You can take a look at the PF website and look up the numerous fakes of this stamp (mainly fake cancels). Most are much higher quality than this.
Many of the real cancels are bold red grid type, although few other colors exist. I believe this the key stamp to finish off a true used 19th century collection

Counterfeit is generally used to denote non-philatelic, while forgery is generally used to denote philatelic, but plenty of people use the two words interchangeably.

There are many different types of counterfeit number 39's out there, some much better then this one. This is not the worst, but it is pretty bad.

Square perforation holes...VERY interesting. Have never, ever seen this before.

The better "fakes" of this issue consist of a true genuine, but generally non sound/damaged Scott 39 stamp with fake/added cancel. It's very common to take a non sound genuine 39 and add a cancel trying to fool a collector. By adding the cancel to a non sound stamp the faker is trying to turn a 100$ stamp into a 10,000$ stamp.

In my opinion this is not a genuine 39 with fake cancel. It is a very poor forgery but still interesting as we are talking about it!

Nice reference page of forgeries, including the above one, right here: http://www.theswedishtiger.com/forgeries.html

Someone was producing the square hole perforation forgeries. Here's one I have:





I don't know who would be fooled by one, they don't look even remotely real. My guess is that someone was producing inexpensive space fillers.

Joe

Looks like it goes for something less than $90.... http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-39-90c-W...056016.l4276

Completely different counterfeit. Design, impression, and perfs are not similar at all.

Genuine 39's with fake cancels are not "counterfeits", they are altered. The cancel is counterfeit not the stamp.
The ebay counterfeit is also terrible, and not worth anything close to $89.

The 24 cent is a modern reproduction of a type that has been flooding ebay for the last few years.