C3A Just Sold On Ebay For Over £2k But.

Reminds me of this.

This is probably obvious, but it does not look at all like a cut-and-paste job. Removing the vignette from another stamp and somehow turning it over in this case would not work or would at least be noticeable. Look at the shape of the vignette, and then think how, upside down, it could even fit in that space. It wouldn't fit. Replacing or substituting one vignette for another is generally done when the space is the same all around -- a square or an oval, for example. In this case, how could you possibly do that?

Also there would be evidence of it being a cut-out, especially on the back of the stamp where you would see the edge of the now-upside-down vignette. It would be very clear. The back of this stamp shows nothing even remotely like that. So it has almost surely not been cut and pasted upside down.

What about those dots of blue ink from the airplane appearing farther out on the red border? Doesn't that prove it's real? Well, no, because a forger would most likely do just that to convince a buyer it's real.

As for the paper, it would be a lot easier to know if we could hold the stamp up to the light, but the paper looks a bit unconvincing. It's not exactly stamp paper to my eye, anyway.

And so on , , , So this is not real. It's a forgery.

It's done pretty well with some attention to detail (the blue ink outside the vignette is kind of clever), but it has to be a forgery. $2000 for a forgery? Kind of ridiculous.

I have a few "copies" of the upside-down airplane stamp, myself, marked "reproduction" on the back. I may have paid as much as $5 each. One is in my National album on that lonely page with a space for this stamp all by itself, so I had to put one of my copies there. I've neatly printed "copy" beneath it so my descendants don't get too excited when they see it. But any collector could spot it as a photo-copy or whatever it is.

This forgery is better than what I have. It could convince an unwary buyer -- which apparently it has. At least the seller noted that's it's very likely not real. $2000 is a bit hard to believe, isn't it?

Zebra Man, that is absolutely hilarious! Thanks for that. Maybe we should start a campaign to "fix" all the upside-down airplane stamps this way?

I have been known to joke about how someone filled in the perf holes on imperf between multiples.