Please Help In Identifying Stamps - Armenia, 1922

hy-brasil..

Really appreciate you sharing your knowledge about genuine/forgeries for this issue. And thanks for alerting me about this on my Armenia blog post at Big Blue 1840-1940.

You are the best!

50 rubles addendum

No genuine in hand for direct comparison. The forgery here shows its shape of the front of the helmet and the tiny crook in the attachment of the bayonet without shading. In both genuine and forgery, the bayonet is placed so the soldier would shoot his bayonet.

25000 rubles
The characteristics are the same for both colors.

Genuine. The top of the left circle with the hammer and sickle has a 3mm line above (A&T). It is a thickening of the top part of the circle, possibly a retouch; compare with the same design element on the right side. The curl at upper left is more complete than the forgery (Barefoot). This is true of some but not all forgeries. Note the shape of the "clouds" at upper right; this is found on some forgeries also. Not indicated is the column at right has 2 lines that are just short of the curved ornament above plus 2 distinct lines that do touch the curved ornament. The fineness of the impression shows this to be a relatively early printing.

Forgery. The top of the left circle may be slightly thicker but is not like the genuine. The curl in the upper left ornament could be more closed or short like this. This forgery has "clouds" like the genuine. A key is that in the right column, there are 2 lines that are shorter and more crooked than the original. Plus the other 2 lines more or less merge into one when they reach the circular ornament above.

Forgery. The whole circle at upper left has a thicker outer line; compare with the circle at upper right. The curl in the left circular ornament is short. The "clouds" are larger and very different from the original. The 2 leftmost lines in the right column are short like the forgery above. Also noted is the shading outside overall and outside the frameline, an artifact of the photo film used for copying. There are genuine with a hairline outside the frameline but not as heavy as this.

Forgery. There is no heavier line/possible retouch in the upper left circle. The curl is short. The "clouds" are different. The lines in the right column are like those of the forgery first described. There are dots and blobs outside the frameline that are characteristic of photographic copying.

Genuine brown olive imperfs are scarcer than blue imperfs. The genuine brown olive perfed stamp is rare.

Impression
Some genuine earlier prints have been shown in this thread: fine framelines, very sharp details. The genuine can also run to slightly grainy prints typical of litho printing to rather murky prints.

Forgeries run from slightly grainy prints to very murky. Some have lines of dots and blobs outside the framelines characteristic of sloppy photographic copying.

Additionally, sheets of both genuine and forgeries have been recorded but are different sizes/formats. Blocks of both exist and are not rare.

Papers and gum

Find the genuine stamps here! The genuine and what I would call the first forgery are so similar as to be indistinguishable. Add in the effects of time, too. Barefoot states the forgery gum is greenish, but I find the the paper of genuine and the first forgery are greenish under certain types of light. The papers of both are thin so the design shows through to the back against a black background. The weave is only slightly apparent when held to the light.

The gum is thin, cream to yellowish and semigloss on fresh genuine stamps. Again, with time, it can go to brownish and shiny as it does for the first forgeries. For the scan above, the first and third are genuine, the upper right stamp is a first forgery.

Perforations tend to be clean for genuine, clean to rather rough for forgeries.


These two are from what I call the second forgery. The paper is thicker, cream-colored, smooth-surfaced on the face. The gum is thin and cream to yellowish, though like the left stamp here, they do exist without gum and look like they were never gummed. "G.S." is an owner's mark and not a expert mark.

The soft bright white paper forgery mentioned in earlier posts is the most recent of the forgeries I've encountered and was probably not seen by the real experts (A&T). For a view of a back, see rod's scan 3 posts back. The paper has a wider weave than the genuine, but is most notable for being so bright as to be bluish, an indication of optical brighteners typical of recent papers. The impression is moderately grainy and rough with dots and blobs outside the margins typical of sloppy photographic copying. This forgery is dangerous in that it has some corrected design elements but looks to be copied from forgeries; so the forger had some idea of what genuine stamps look like.

For online studies of the later surcharged stamps see:
https://stampsofarmenia.com/
Big Blue has forgery info of this and other issues of Armenia:
http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/
Thanks again to rod222, a generous stalwart of SCF.

A tour de force, HB,
well done you.

Now to isolate my forgeries and make Album pages with your ID references.

Just started going through my mix of Armenia - and finding both forgeries and genuine in my group based on this great thread. Thanks for putting it together with so much detail. (If any images are still needed, happy to post).

Initial pass at the set is complete, a tentative census of genuine vs. forgery from a group untouched for many years may be of interest. 39 total, 17 genuine, 20 forgery, 2 unknown.

Struggling a bit with the 3r (carmine) value as there doesn't seem to be other distinguishing features beyond the frameline extension?

I didn't have but a couple of the 3R values and the references all use that lower left frame projection as the key for genuine. Here's more detail:

Genuine: The lower left frame projection shown again. This is a relatively early clear print. This happens to have projections at other corners, but apparently all genuine positions have a lower left projection. This copy also show a tiny margin smudge, a few lines slightly sticking out of the frame at right and also a position dot. Interesting but nothing to really get excited about.

The lower parts of the 5 lower rays from the star have a white line at right, that also extend beyond the rays themselves in two of the rays.

The right foot of the inner central frame has a heavy foot.



Forgeries:The two at top have no lower left frameline projection, but the one at bottom does.

The two at top have no white lines along the star rays. The bottom one does, but the white lines do not extend beyond the rays.

The two at top have a thin or weak line for a foot on the inner right frame. The third has an odd break.

I could almost think that what I have as the third forgery is genuine with being a plate variety, but the paper is wrong, being the thicker, murkier wove paper without a clearly defined weave to it noted with other forgeries. Guessing, it may be printed from an original plate with repairs made to the design.

Again, there are probably more forgery types than this.

Hope this helps.

Wonderful - thanks so much. Based on this, all 3 of my 3r copies are forgeries - each quite different too. It is astounding how much variety there is in the forgeries for this issue. A quick look at Hipstamp revealed that - not surprisingly - the listings for this series are all forgeries or a mix.

Will make for a very nice display when I put them on all my pages. Thanks again.

I stumbled across this old thread when I did a search by image in Google trying to identify this find in my little kiloware lot. Based on Hy-brasil's comments, it looks like I have a forgery? No spur on the bottom right line.




Out of curiosity I checked current e-bay auctions. Out of ten listings I found for this stamp (searching Armenia 291), only two have the spur and are listed at something like $60.

I can't complain. My likely forgery is still interesting in a really cheap kilo lot.

Glad this was useful. Yes, that one is a forgery. For this issue, you need to match up all the points, since the very modern forgeries on bright white paper have some but not all the characteristics corrected.

The Scott catalog prices have apparently jumped up a lot recently. The cynic here says to expect more forgeries of this issue down the road.