It's elaborate, but also oddly lazy. I can understand the need for a missive to France to account for the 2d use, but putting the label on a random French stampless cover seems indolent.
Thanks everyone for your comments, as I suspected it was too good to be true. Considering the postal from the UK to France in 1841 was 1s, along with all the other red flags. What is surprising to me is that SB's NY came back with an estimate $3-5K. Happily I didn't pay very much for it.
The lettering is crude, especially the wobbly W in "TWO" and sans-serif N in "PENCE", and there are heavy lines on the face and neck. I expect closer magnification would reveal even more defects, and that the printing process is lithography.
The fake Maltese cross is much better work than the fake stamp!
Despite Sotheby's invitation to consign one's rare stamps to them, they don't have a stamp department. So maybe the enquiry was passed on to their resident incunabulist.
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Posted 05/13/2026 6:02 pm
