Rhodesia "Double Head" Modern Fakes

Floortrader reminded me of some modern fakes I picked up a while back. They are the classic Rhodesia "double heads" but unlike Floortrader's these wouldn't fool anyone even if they were put inside a black plastic bag. The originals are Perf. 14, 15 or (more uncommonly) 13.5 and these horrors are Perf. 10 and printed on white paper with no gum. The detail is pretty good, admittedly, and someone has at least gone to the effort of scanning these with about a billion dpi. The £1 value is not in the issued colours but is the so-called "error of colour", whilst in reality it was prepared for use but never issued.

Worth sharing anyway, and now I can tuck them back to bed in my "fakes and forgeries" section. I probably paid too much for them, anyway.

Anybody know the source? Are they Hialeah (or successor) forgeries? If so, we'll probably see them pop up on ebay sometime.

Also of note are the Double Head color trial proofs that made it out of the Waterlow vaults. During the blitz in WWII, their vaults were flooded by water from firefighting. So no gum on those, but often found nice and clean. At first look, some of the color combos were close to issued colors. So beware of those, too. There were lots around in large blocks, so very cheap back in the 1970s. Because of the soaking, many specialists consider them worthless for color comparison.

I don't know the origin of these, and have been trying to find out. They look like Laserjet printings of high resolution scans. The paper quality is poor, with a high rag content.

These and similar replicas of other expensive stamps regularly appear on ebay.
They are modern reproductions that are sold as an inexpensive way of completing a collection for those who cannot afford the genuine thing. There does not appear to be any attempt to defraud, but why anyone would pay the kind of prices that are being asked, $5 and upwards for a scrap of paper that has been reproduced on a colour copier and then perforated is beyond me.
I have on occasion been completed puzzled as the price of a single "valuable" stamp soars up to $20 or even $30 in a bidding war.
Judging from the feedback of the sellers, these reproductions are surprisingly popular.
Clive

Tim: thank you for this educational update.

Many of these are coming from Japan, described as "replicas". Here is one currently for sale from Vancouver Island.

A set of these were in my local stamp club auction last night, being sold 'as is', with a reserve of £40.

I was shocked that at least 3 bidders chased them until the hammer went down at £75!!

I know nothing about 'double heads' but it took me just a fraction of a second to clock them as fakes -- the striations on the super-luminous 4d were the biggest giveaway.

Sheesh £75

You could surely buy the genuine articles to the 2 shilling for that sort of money.

They just look wrong though, those shown in the first post, to my eyes anyway.

Still, they're so popular and the 2'6 and up command good prices so it's a way of filling the gaps I guess.

Can't remember off the top of my head if there are any classic forgeries of this issue?

For the life of me I can't understand why any collector would pay knowingly for counterfeit stamps 'to fill the gaps'.

Different if you are making a study of fakes, as some do, but putting a worthless stamp in an album alongside the real thing is pointless to me.

I either wait until I can afford the genuine, or I don't bother.

Regards
DavidR

Steve, I was at that auction as well. They were embarrassingly bad fakes, and what made it worse was that there were genuine Double Heads which weren't sold.

Bobby, there are forgeries of the Double Heads but they are cleaned fiscally used stamps, either regummed or with fake cancels. Some of them are good, but reasonably well known. It's always best to buy the higher values (2/- and above) from either a specialist dealer with a good reputation, with an opinion/certificate.

My Griqualand stamps sold well at the auction though...

I generally share DavidR's sentiments but what happens when you know you'll never be able to afford the genuine article?

I bought an old school France 1849 1F vermilion forgery to fill a gap. Looks a lot more attractive than the modern tat being peddled out of certain countries on ebay.

Thanks for showing these recent fakes . I would like to add two short stories to explain why these types of fakes are so popular and many are sold .

I was at a Rasdale Stamp Auction around 2004 ,there was a album of British Colonies up for auction that I wanted ,it had good runs of many different Colonies with a lot of nice used canceled stamps something unusual but worth 400 or $500 . Not high price gems or complete sets but a lot of postal cancels from small Colonies . There also were in this collection a lot of very early stamps but they all had the same cancel so I discounted all the fakes to a few dollars but I wanted those nicely canceled middle values.

As the bidding went a couple from Minnesota was bidding against me ,I won the lot but paid a dear price . During checking out the couple came over to me ,they told me they really wanted the lot and it would of helped their ebay business because it had so many early high catalog stamps . I had to catch myself from exploding,I said to them. I overpaid for the lot because you looked in a catalog and thought all those early stamps were real ! { You bunch of idiots} That is when I realized it is in the interest of consignors and auction houses to leave fakes and forgeries in their lots because there are buyers who don't understand forgeries exist or the difference .


My other story caused a lot fighting and name calling on a stamp chatboard and the lost of friendly behavior . This was when the Hialeah Forgeries were selling hot . The posters on the chatboard were all going wild over the failure of ebay to shut it down . Their big argument was inexperience collector were getting taken and not knowing what they are buying and this was the downfall of the hobby . It got wild on the chat board .

First I was a buyer of these fakes ,anytime I can get 40 -50 fakes for $3.00 no matter how bad they are, it is still good to add them to my reference collection of fakes and forgeries. So I made 4 or 5 purchases of different groups {they were poorly made but if your going to have a reference collection it is better to have them}. This was back when you could see who was buying them on ebay ,now ebay closed that ability down .

The item which really got them fired up ,was when I showed them that it wasn't newbies or bunnies buying these lots but experience highly rated people who had hundreds of good feedback and even some resellers who already had feedback numbers in the thousands already on ebay back then. They were P.O. with me for bring that into their discussion .

Floortrader, I think you missed a trick there -- you could have sold all the old fakes on to the couple straight away and recouped a lot of your cost.

But for sure auction houses leave all the fakes in, hoping that some newby will bid like crazy. The more honest ones describe the lot 'as is', setting off alarm bells for anyone with a modicum of experience.