Germany Occupation Russia Laisvi Overprint ?

Hello, I am hoping you can help. Trying to organize one of my stockbooks and found these with a note "germany occupation russia laisvi". I bought about 50 of them from a guy in greece several years ago. So my questions are would these stamps be listed under germany, russia or lithuania in Scott for example. And, if you know, are forgeries a problem with these? Thanks for any help you can provide. Jon

I am not an expert in this area, but the stamps look like genuine Soviet CTO's with modern inkjet overprints added. Under a magnifier, check if any of the cancels are on top of the overprints. Anyone else have thoughts?

know nothing about them but I am listening

Issued in 1941 during Germany occupation. Not listed in Scott that I am aware of.

Forged overprints abound. If I remember correctly, there's even a website that specializes in sniffing out forged overprints offered for sale on ebay. I have not seen all the overprints, so I cannot tell you if it is real or not. But the few that I've seen that were genuine did not appear as crude as this one. But maybe there really is an overprint that looks like that?

Thanks for posting the interesting pic!

k

OK, I'm now 99% sure they are all forgeries. Since BC mentioned about the CTO's, I now realize several of the stamps were issued well AFTER 1941.

They picked the wrong stamps -- ones issued AFTER the supposed overprints were made.

In case anyone is interested, I found the link to the webpage regarding laisvi forgeries for sale on ebay.

http://lithuanianphilately.com/forg...exposed.html

I found the first four stamps under Russia in my Scott's catalogue but without the overprints. I found the following website dealing with Lithuanian Fakes/Forgeries and I see one of the fake overprints listed there appears on one of your stamps:

http://lithuanianphilately.com/forg...exposed.html

Added to my post - I wasn't fast enough on my post to beat khj with my link

Sorry, forgot about the last stamp. It appears to be an overprint, I assume, for the German occupation of Pleskau. I've only seen a similar overprint on a German stamp. This is the first time I've seen this on a Russian stamp. I know nothing beyond that, so whether genuine or not...?

I agree with BeeSee - they don't look right (although I haven't seen originals to compare them with).

They're supposed to be local German Occupation issues from:

- Zaporozhye (Alexanderstadt) in Ukraine

- Alsedziai in Lithuania

- Pskov (Pleskau) in Russia

but I'd assume they're all forgeries unless you have good evidence otherwise.

Thank you so much everyone! I will assume they are forgeries until proven otherwise. I have contacted the website you referenced to see if they have someone available to look at a few of the scans. Yeah, that does not make sense if they are on a stamp with 1944 on it if they should have been from 1941. Thanks again everyone. Jon

Jon, These two Lithuania "Laisvi Alsedziai" overprints are very crude forgeries.

Here are some scans of what I believe are genuine overprints (last one for Ukraine?). They are from the Sandafayre archives.

Thank you again for the help. It is nice to see some other stamps too. That site that was reference earlier has a form similar to this (other than it does not look like it is used much). I posted the question there also. Thank you again everyone. Jon

The feedback I got from that website you pointed out was "crude forgeries" for the first three above. I may separate all the ones that look like they were done with those "stamps" and inquire about the rest. Thanks again, Jon

Thanks for the update, Jon!

k