That reminds me of a 1c 1851 stamp that I have which is incorrectly plated and ID'd wrong, but the PFC is signed by Mort Neinken, who wrote the book. It happens.
Everyone can make a mistake. That includes the men who wrote the books. A stamp with a cert is still worth having even if a mistake is made every once in a while. The stamps in question are you sure they are what the cert calls for. The stamps could have been replaced with forgeries that match the photo on the certs. This giving them the genuine stamps and passing the fakes on to someone. If the stamps are closely matched to the photo it could be passed off as the one in the certs. I would look very carefully to make sure first. You could always resubmit the stamps for a second look. I think I would trust the two you named to make the correction if needed or confirm their first opinion.
I have three PSE certs for plate blocks of the over run country stamps. All three are obviously the over print veritys but the certs do not recognize then as such and they graded then to be 95s. I bought them to be regular issues but after receiving them I confirmed they are the over prints. So yes the very best can have an off day and fail to recognize or mistakenly authenticate a stamp that is a fake. I still buy PSE certs. It is better to have one than to not as so few mistakes are made it makes so little difference in the reliability of their valuable service.
A search of the PF website would show that a high percentage of the items actually have little chance of a mistake; there are is no other stamp possible. Then there are the issues where the varieties are clearly denoted in the design, and can be seen by simply enlarging the image. For the rest, there would have been far more complaints about mistakes over the years than there have been if a serious number of mistakes were being made.
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