Help Identifying Latvia Forgeries, 1919, SC 3-5, MI 3-5

Asking about the 1919 redrawn series on paper with widely spaced blue lines.

Sources identify forgeries by the number of colored lines hanging down like a fringe above the letters of Latvia. But how many? Varro Tyler says that the genuines have 21 and forgeries 23, but his photo of a genuine has 23 and his forgery has 28.

My two scans show the 10K with 23 and the 15K with 22. Haven't been able to find more info online.

Try this

https://stampforgeries.com/forged-s...s-of-latvia/

Regards

Thanks for responding, Igrodri. I have seen that site. It provides nice photos of one or two obvious, indeed rather crude, forgeries by Sekula, but nothing else: no explanations or criteria for detecting forgeries.

Both Tyler and Souers (Forgeries of Common Stamps after WWI) insist on the quality, but especially on the number, of colored lines forming the fringe-like design situated above the word "Latvia." But here there seems to be some confusion. For the first issue, 1918, printed on the back of German war maps (SC 1-2, Mi 1-2), genuine stamps have 21 of those hanging colored lines. More than that, e.g., 28 colored lines, indicates a forgery. For the subsequent, redrawn issue of 1919, however, Tyler again says that 21 is the right number. Yet, other than the green 15K shown above, all my good copies have 23 such lines. Not one has 21. And it's that redrawn issue of 1919 that interests me.

So, I'm hoping that some of our SCF forgery experts (Floortrader? Perf12?) may yet weigh in. Or a Latvian specialist. Or anyone who knows of a better web site to visit.

Never mind.
I hope you will find the right answer.
Some of these issues 1918-1922 are really hard to distinguish.
I guess there are more forgeries than genuine among the collectors.

E Maxim ----Give me a until tomorrow , here is my page from my collection 50 years ago ,I have not seen it for about 40 years . Let me get up to speed on this subject and respond tomorrow . I also have two other worldwide collections to review .

Take all the time you need. Appreciate any help you can give.
Eric

They look like forgeries?.check this site.Yours are on ruled paper.
The blue should have 23 lines and the green 22
http://www.laimins.com/latvia/sun.html
https://www.filatelija.lv/saulite-l...ms-1919-1921

Thank you, perf12. Neither site talks about forgeries, but the images provided for the second printing (ruled lines) show 23 colored lines for the 10K and 22 for the 15K. That matches my two examples above. So I'm inclined to say that mine are genuine. Also that Tyler's Focus On Forgeries is wrong when it says that the proper number is 21. Let's see whether floortrader has anything to add.

Eric ---Sorry don't think I can add to what has been already posted here . All the stamps I looked at seem real and at mininal value that I have .Will watch this to see if someone has something to add .

Forgery discriptions in old books are for the Map stamps of 1918 which have 21 lines.The ruled paper printings of 1919 are ignored.

Agree with perf12, the second printing (1919) hasn't received sufficient attention. Tyler's book seems to have confused it with the 1918 series, in which genuine copies have no more than 21 colored lines hanging down above "Latvia." Both his own photo and the sites that perf12 has posted show that genuine copies of the 1919 redrawn design of the 10K will have 23 such lines. From the web sites it also appears that the 15K will have only 22 and the 5K will have many more, possibly 28 (which is what my own copies have). That seems odd but the wartime circumstances that led to the need for this second printing may well have resulted in a lack of consistency in the production of the separate plates. Which leads me to wonder, what evidence do we have for the existence of any forgeries for the 1919 redrawn design?

And floortrader, thanks for your input. Good luck with the eye surgery. We rely on you a lot.

Eric

Forgeries of the 1919 issue? good question.will have to look into that.There were several types on ruled paper...
http://www.latvianstamps.com/4lv.htm

This is the size I need to count lines .

Floortrader, your 5K shows 28 lines. My 5K is from the fourth (watermarked) series but the design in that series is the same and also shows 28 lines. That would mean that each of the three low values of the redrawn series has a different number of lines: 28 for the 5K, 23 for the 10K, 22 for the 15K. That seems confirmed by one of the links that perf12 provided: http://www.laimins.com/latvia/sun.html

Also, still to be determined: Whether there are any forgeries of these redrawn series of 1919.

You might try contacting Micheal Bloom on these, I believe he's done a pretty thorough job with Latvia...