Counterfeits And Forgeries

I have included herein items in my collection which were previously identified as 1) forgeries, 2) counterfeits, 3) not postally valid, and 4) country unknown. Any help in clarifying/elaborating on these issues would be appreciated.

The following Venezuelan items, were identified as 'forgeries'

1.



2.



3.



4.



5.



6.



7.



The following Greek/Crete items, were identified as 'counterfeit'
8.



9.



10.



11.



The following Jugoslavian items, were overprinted in London and sold by Jugoslavia in 1950, and identified as 'not postally valid.'

12.



13.



The following items, country unknown, are believed to be valid for postage.

14.



15.

The four British Post Office in Crete stamps are all forgeries. The paper, colour, perforation and design are all wrong.

The Turkish item is from the Turkish Air Association and is a charity label from around 1941. There were earlier government postal tax stamps for aviation that were obligatory on certain days of the year but this stopped in 1934. I don't believe it was valid for postage.

Probably a good thing you asked to double check. Stamp 3, Venezuela #137(1896), appears to be genuine -- unless there is another forgery of this stamp not known to me. I have circled in red the distinguishing feature in the pic below. That little "spur" along the baseline is sufficient condition to ID a genuine 5c stamp. Please note, however, that the absence of the spur does NOT mean the stamp is genuine. ~10% of the genuine stamps do not have the spur.

The "windmill" stamp is from Spain, to raise money for postal employees in need. You can read "Giro" in the cancel, the postal savings plan.

Stamps 4-7 are forgeries. On some of your forgeries, you can see bits and pieces of a guide line near one or more of the corners (see the wider margins). This is sign one of several forgeries. In the genuine stamp, you should see guide lines running the full length/width of the stamp -- although the guide lines may be broken in many places. In the forgeries, the guide lines can only been seen near the corners -- they do not run the length/width of the stamp.

On stamp 9, one way to detect a forgery is to note the circle is open at the bottom (see spot circled in red).

KHJ; Re the other (first two) Venezuela's, can you tell whether they are counterfeit? or not?
Nigelc; Re the Crete stamps, thank you. Re the Turkish stamp, I thought that since it was in the envelope with the one from Spain, it was from the same country.
Doug2222; Re the Spanish 'windmill' stamp, thanks for the followup.

I also note that item 2 is more defined than item 1, plus item 2 has a postmark. (Not that that means anything by itself, of course.)

Kim is spot on bout the key test for these Crete forgeries.

Here are two pictures I've posted before on another site of stamps from my collection.

This one shows left to right a genuine stamp, a good forgery and a not very good forgery:



Here's a close up of the centre circle from the first two stamps:

Varro does not extend his description to include the other denominations in the set, so I'm a little hesitant to make any statements regarding the other 2 stamps.

There is a blog that talks about these early Venezuelan stamps -- if you don't know Spanish, you will need a website translator.

http://www.asofilca.com/

Great link! Thanks Kim

Nigel, I just received an email from his daughter that Mel (stampsz) has gone to the great stamp album in the sky. I'm going to take a break for awhile...

That's such sad news Kim.

I checked the blog - couldn't find the Venezuela item - I don't speak Spanish anyway; Maybe someone can enlighten me.

As a point of reference, there is a difference between forgeries and counterfeits. Forgeries were created to defraud collectors; counterfeits were created to defraud the postal or internal revenue authorities.