Hawaii Help? Specimen Stamp?

I assume Hawaii is considered US back of book so I posted here. Any help from expert in this area much appreciated.
Cannot find this stamp listed as "SPECIMEN" in my Scott 2010 catalog specialized US

Any help here? stamp has a thin, appears cancelled, but then "specimen" stamped on it?

Hope everyone had nice Thanksgiving. Looks like 'noreaster' storm hitting up by me. Going to shut everything down for a day or two. I find these are best times to enjoy indoor hobby.

Hawaii was a UPU member until 1900 and was required to send stamps to other members for identification purposes. These would not necessarily be overprinted SPECIMEN so that other countries might often so overprint them themselves. That includes markings in other languages.

However, this stamp, while looking pretty genuine, does not plate to any of the 10 positions possible and is therefore a forgery. EDIT: nope, genuine and rgstamp proved it photographically. It's not a Sperati forgery, who as far as I know photographically copied only one position of Scott #22. If you would indulge me, examine the back and tell me if there is an impression of the printing in the paper.

Thanks for trying to plate. I'll take a look at the back tomorrow. I suspect it may be fake/forgery stamp

Could it be position 9 Westerberg? I never looked at plates for Hawaii stamps so I'm running on beginner feet at Siegel site!

Well done! It is that, Westerberg 12-A-V. Genuine.

I'm sorry about that. Well, I'll be. I'll have to believe the PF and the full pane shown nearby, although position 9/type V looks completely different in my printed copy of Westerberg, showing the bottom corners closed. That's in an intact full pane also. That cannot be. Each frameline is an individually cut piece but the whole pane is locked together tight with the intent that nothing moves. In a short print run like for this, it didn't. And that's how you identify positions and genuineness. That's how you did it.

Nothing wrong with your stamp, it's (really) bad reproduction for that page of the Westerberg book, I guess. I saw the inner framelines matched, but that was all. Before plating, it looked every bit genuine like I mentioned. I should have gone to another source like Siegel's or the PF to confirm; lesson learned.


Still the question remains, whose specimen overprint is that?

Getting cancellation ink all over the stamp is kind of unusual for a real specimen. Kind of defeats the purpose.