Spanish Treasure Hunt! **they've Arrived! 10/1**

Another topic dealing with large quantities of 1 stamp prompted me to post this.

I just won this lot yesterday:



It is (supposedly) 65g of the common 50m ultramarine of Spain, from 1870. never bought stamps by the weight before, but going by some figure I've seen on the web there could be any where from 1000 to 1500 copies (off paper).

This will be a fun lot to go through. Just looking at the scan provided by the seller, I can clearly see colored cancels, SON's, cartwheels and more. Hoping it hasn't been picked over too bad.

Also hoping to come across a postal forgery or 2, which would make the price of the lot justified by itself.

I'll post some pictures of what I find when it get's here (coming from across the pond).

Can't wait!

What a great bunch of stamps!
I have a question....
You write that you are hoping to come across a postal forgery or 2.
Does anyone have a postal forgery to show me?
I have NO idea what that is, or why anyone would take the time to create and forge a stamp?

I had to use an online grams to ounces conversion



So about 2.3 ounces, wow nice!
I've recently become interested in cancels and have a small drawer pretty full! I will start a new thread regarding cancels.

Please do let us know and upload some photos after you receive and show us your pretty finds!

Thank you,
SueStamps

A lot of forgeries are of high value stamps for selling. Some involve taking a cheaper stamp and making it look like a more expensive stamp, for example, removing a cancellation or adding an overprint. Some are done for other reasons, for example political. In WW II, both the U.S. and Germany forged common stamps of other countries with changes to reflect their political views.

Try searching Wikipeida for "stamp forgery" and you'll find a fascinating article on the subject (only 14 more posts until I can post links).

What I've always been told is that "postal forgeries" were designed with the intent to defraud governments and are usually the low face value stamps that were used on everyday mail and actually got by postal authorities and cancelled just like genuine stamps.

"Philatelic forgeries" on the other hand are imitations, usually of high value stamps, designed to defraud stamp collectors and dealers.

Then there is the whole realm of "fakes", which include taking genuine stamps that are damaged and repairing them trying to pass them off as sound, applying fake overprints to genuine stamps to enhance the value, and the list goes on.

I'll post a "postal forgery" when I get a chance.

Several months ago I attended the APS StampShow here in Atlanta. One collector there had several rolls (!) of postal forgeries. He was selling them as forgeries. I will try and get a scan of a strip to post here!

A very long way from Spain, but here is a postal forgery of the Jammu & Kashmir ½ Anna basic letter rate stamp:



and the reverse, showing the fragment of envelope to which it's attached:



This was intended purely to defraud the Jammu & Kashmir Post Office - of the fraction of a cent that the stamp was worth.

And for comparison, a genuine ½ Anna, from the corner of the sheet and with the frame lines:



(The imitation 'perforations' were part of the design of the genuine stamps, but were omitted from the forgeries.)

Here's an idea.! Instead of making forgeries solely to defraud the postal service simply make up 1000 of them, stick them on envelopes to yourselves, mail them and sell them to collectors and dealers as "genuine undetected postal forgery on cover, only $5 each!"

And land in jail for mail fraud. Or theft of service.

Is it legal to sell forgeries, anyway though?

Legal if you identify them as such.

Ok, the bunch of stamps has arrived today. Pretty fast shipping from GB! However, I'm a bit underwhelmed at what's inside. It seems the seller failed to mention that most of the stamps were ON PAPER and cut close (Some too close). So, the estimate of 65g is including the backing paper from the folded letters. It's going to take quite a bit of work on my part to, hopefully, get my money's worth out of this group. I guess I'll know better next time to ask before I bid.

I also noticed quite a few damaged copies in here as well. But then again, the ad did say "mixed condition".

I almost forgot about this thread. It took me a while to go through these, mostly because I wasn't too thrilled with them.

I first went through and just picked out the best cancels. Here is a scan of the group I pulled out. There are some neat ones here, a lot of which I hadn't previously had examples. Unfortunately the condition and quality of the stamps themselves means I will still be looking for upgrades.





I haven't investigated all the cancels yet, but I'll get a "round tuit" eventually.

Here is a shot of 2 piles of stamps. After removing the ones with better cancels I then went through them again, removing all the ones that, in my opinion, are trash! That's the pile on the left. Most of these have at least 2 sides of perfs trimmed off. Some, all 4 sides. I haven't decided if I want to just throw them away, save them for some future reference use, or use them on a decoupage project. The pile on the right (in the blue box) are what I deemed "acceptable".




I never counted the total number of stamps, but I'd say somewhere in the vicinity of 35-40% are junk.

On the good side, there appears to be quite a bit of variety in shades, even in the "good" pile, so all hope is not lost yet.

All in all however, if I'd known how shabby the over all quality was on these I probably would have chose to spend the money elsewhere.

Out of curiosity, what kind of feedback have you left for the seller?

I haven't.......yet.

This is actually the first time in about 12 years of ebaying that I've had this, so giving negative or even neutral fb, is something I'm not accustomed to.


However, this particular seller won't get my business again. I've already seen another lot of old Spain ( a different stamp) that I passed up, but would have bid on from any other seller.

I may just let my non-patronage do the talking.