Australia King George VI 3d Stamp With Inverted Perfin?

I have another copy of the australia king george VI 3d stamp with inverted perfin.The perfin is something unusual because it is not completely inverted but just the letters L,T and J perfins are inverted of the DJ LTD perfin right on the stamp.I do not really know anything about it and never seen anything like this before as a stamp collector for so many years to be honest.I would think this is certainly unusual thing to be discovered from my collection so far.

It looks interesting to me and I always look at it.I need the experts to help me to identify if this is a genuine perfin or not and also is a common or rare thing happened on any other australia stamp because I am not an expert in australia stamp,your personal opinion and explnation are needed in detail for it.Please refer to the scans below and let me know what you think.Thank you

It is most likely "David Jones Limited"

They are a clothing company mostly.

All the letters of the perfin are inverted, not just the L T and J.

The "TD" is raised a little above the "L". That's just the way they designed the perfin. But all the letters of the perfin are in the same direction.

While not common, it is not unusual to have inverted perfins. They really didn't make much effort to make sure all the sheets were put in the same direction.

First of all, it looks perfectly normal to me; your image shows it upside down. Second, there's no way to prove a perfin is genuine. I understand that even the RPS no longer certifies Australian "O.S." perfins due to the excellence of the forgeries. Finally, since they are privately produced, sometimes on hand-cranked equipment, anything is possible, especially if the operator gets bored and decides to create "varieties".

So I would not get too excited about perfin errors.

It saddens me greatly about forged Australian perfins and the mess that you can get into trying to collect them or sell them.

I do believe that most used stamps with perfins can be proven to be real if the cancel is over the top of the perfin and ink can be matched that is inside the perfin holes.

I have got some used Australia KGV's with perfin OS that are very hard to come by and look very real to me because of the way they look through very strong magnification.But they will just not sell because of their bad reputation through forgeries in the market place.

I think it was the 3rd single watermark in the 2.5d Australia Map and Kangaroo stamp was never found with large perfin OS untill the 1970s. When this basically 1st of the forgeries was put up for sale it sold for a fortune. So this stamp that was made in the 1920s and sold in the 1970s signaled the end of perfin credibility in Australia stamp collecting. How sad is that!?!

I hope there false profit turned into..... maggots.

KGV collector,

I really like the name of the clothing company because it is a wonderful name sound to me.At first I thought it was a radio station company and the perfin was from the private company.Would you like to tell me what was the purpose that the private company perfin used on this stamp and I really not sure about it,does it command some value and demand by the collector?I hope to hear from you over there.Thank you

Khj,

You definely have a good explanation right there and I have checked it again about the perfin.It is not just the entire perfin is inverted but the perfin is inverted in a reverse way of the stamp.Try to imagine if you put the letters L,T and J perfin back into upright position on obverse side,this letters are in reverse position but not in upright position actually over there because it was punched in a reverse inverted way on the gum side position,hope you understand what I mean right now.Thank you

Doug2222,

I believe those perfins such as OS,OS NSW and G NSW were mostly forgeries due to officially issued by the government but those perfins issued by the private companies were less forgeries out there because it has less demand by the collectors in the market,maybe I am wrong about it because there must be special collectors who are also interested in the perfins and they would pay high price for it.I would like to hear more from you.Thank you

Hi Chinesestamplover.

Thank you for your very kind words.

Perfins were made because a lot of people who had access to the stamps or a lot of the people who used the stamps for mailing for the government or from private companies would steal them.

Then the person that stole the stamps could take them back to the Post Office and get the face value of the stamps back in money.

I remember reading a very old News Paper that said that a lot of office boys were getting the money back off stamps from Post Offices that would equal their income for 2 years.

So the Governments Heads and a lot of Private Companies said to stop people stealing our stamps we will make all our stamp have perfins so that the Post Offices could tell they were stolen.

So we have to areas of perfins

1. Government Perfins.

2. Private Perfins.

KGV collector,

May I know is this perfin considered as rare or common right on this stamp?I have seen the private D&J perfins right on other australia stamps selling on ebay currently but not exactly the same perfin same like this on the stamp.I have another question is the private perfins are demand by the collectors out there?I hope you can tell me more about it and your information on above there is really helpful to me.Thank you

Hi Chinesestamplover.

If you do a computer search you will find a perfin on-line club. It is an Australian and New Zealand origin I think.

Perfins in their day were considered to be totally useless to collectors as they were seen as damaged stamps and very few people collected them. Most people through perfins into the rubbish bin.

Now it is very different. Many people enjoy collecting perfins. I see many large lots of perfins at very cheap prices.

An Australian KGV 4d violet used perfin OS catalogue is valued at $35 in 2006 but yesterday I saw a beautiful used KGV 4d violet for by it now at a dealers for sale stock for $4.

If you really are interested in perfins search for the books on Government and private perfin catalogue books book

What I meant was that each letter of the perfin is in correct direction when compared to any other letter of that perfin. There is nothing unusual about the actual letters of the perfin.

When considering the ENTIRE perfin, it is not unusual for private perfins to be in a different direction or punched from a different side. These types of variations occur for many perfins. It was not considered to be a quality control parameter. While I'm sure there are some that are rare, that doesn't mean they are valuable, and in general there will not be a major premium for such varieties. The simple reason is because there is no census of how many normal/abnormal perfin orientations exist for each perfin. Also, there aren't that many perfin collectors willing to pay a premium for these types of variations. These are all generalizations, of course, and there will always be exceptions.

KGV collector,

I understand everything what you said on above there and it seems that the value of the perfin would drop very much after few years but not up and I collect the perfin stamps are just for fun.I really apprieiciate your information very much and get to know more about it aready.Thank you

Khj,

I believe of what you said is definely correct and hope someone could pay me high price for it in the future but I am not going to sell it to anyone right now.Thank you

I agree with you khj

The perforating task was to take a pane of stamps and concertina (collapse in a series of folds like an accordion) the stamps to enable far more than a single stamp to be "holed" on each operation. The stamps once concertinaed might also be folded over.

This type of operation would result in all forms of varieties normal, reversed, inverted, inverted reversed, sideways, sideways reversed, sideways inverted and sideways inverted reversed and we won't even mention diagonals.