Spain 1851 Is It Fake?

Spain 1851 Is it fake?

I think you should visit this website:
http://www.geocities.com/claghorn1p...in/index.htm

You might want to try the following sites?

http://www.ffejournal.com/articles.php

http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Phila...nd_forgeries

http://www.filatelia.fi/forglinks/f...tamps-a.html

Hope these will help you?

Chimo

Bujutsu

Many times the marks on the back are from experts that have reviewed the stamps sometime in the past. However even that can be faked as well some very famous/infamous forgers would also mark there work usually later in their carrers. It would seem they made their money with all the forgeries then wanted recognition for how good they were at doing so. I'm not firmiliar with these but do enjoy what you show us.

All 5 of your stamps are fake, which means the expertizer marks on the back are bogus.

I just checked the expertizer marks. As expected, they are also forged.

I should note, apparently somebody already noticed the stamps and the expertizer marks were forgeries -- which is probably why there is a blue Maltese cross mark on the backside that can be noticed from the front as well.

From what I have heard others say, expertizers marks are not just for declaring a stamp to be genuine. It all depends on where the mark is placed on the back, and it's orientation (right side up, upside down, at 90 degrees, etc..). In otherwords, an expertizer might place his mark on the back of a stamp in a certain spot, oriented a certain way, to indicate that the stamp is in fact a forgery. And I believe I've seen a chart somewhere that describes where to put expertixing marks to indicate certain things, but I can't remember where I saw it. If I find it I will scan it and post it.

Having said that, all these examples are, in my opinion, forgeries. They appear to be forgeries made by Miguel Segui, or at least they look like the Segui examples I have. They all are missing the identifying marks that indicate authentic stamps.

When I get some time, maybe tomorrow, I will post a scan showing what to look for in these issues.

Actually, only a few expertizers used such a convention, and it not only depends on the expertizer/group, but also WHEN they started using the convention. BPP is the largest expertizer group that I know of that utilizes a type of "position" convention.

Regardless, the expertizer would mark the stamp with "FALSCH", not just rely on positioning/orientation of expertizer mark. Most of the time, the purpose of positioning is in regards to the condition/type of the stamp (i.e., mint, used, non-overprinted, overprinted...). This was to circumvent altering the stamp after the expertizer mark was added (e.g., prevent someone from adding a fake overprint or fake cancel).

In the pictures above, all the A. ROIG marks are fake, just like the stamps.

Spain_1850, it would be great of you if you could post details about what to look for. I only used a single test for the 1851 issues: in REALES/CUARTOS, the AL/AR are connected at the base.

Thanks in advance!

Just to compare, I'm enclosing images of "genuine" Seguí forgeries (or "facsímiles" as he liked to call them). Seguí, was a turn of the century Majorcan cafe landlord, who tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate classic Spanish stamps to frame the members of a philatelic club that met at his Barcelona cafe. He,actually, lost his furtune on his vane attempt. Anyway, I know next to nothing about Spanish classicals.

khj - Thank you for the clarification on the expertizers marks.

The tests you use are good ones. The one I use is one that can be used for all the values in the set.



Here is a section taken from a scanned image of the very common 6 cuartos black of 1851.

The left arrow is pointing to the top serif on the first "1" of 1851. It is rather long and thin and ends in a slight ball or bulge. Also, the lower right serif of the last "1" is long and ends in a similar bulge.

These are the main things I look at when examining this series, along with tests such as yours.

If you look at all of the scans above, they are all missing these 2 bulges at the ends of the serifs. All the forgeries I've seen that I believe are from Miguel Segui, have short serifs with no bulges. About the only forgeries I've seen that pass this test are Sperati forgeries. There might be others, I just haven't seen them.

Thank you for the great info and pics, Spain_1850!

k