French / Alsace / Lorriane Stamps - Help Required

Hi,

My parents have kindly given me some stamps which were passed to them to look them up on the internet.....

This site has been a great help, although I'm finding it difficult counting perforations!

I've some stamps which I just can't find though. One is a French training stamp of President Louis Napoléon, in green, dated 1849, with 0 cost? Anyone ever seen one?





Then 2 stamps which I believe to be from Alsace / Lorraine (one was posted in Kayersberg). Brown stamp is 10 centimes, blue stamp 20 centimes. Any advice?

Hope to hear from you soon..... thanks

Both your ALSACE/LORRAINE stamps look real, most copies on E-bay are forgeries I don't have my forgery pages but if you lay a ruler from the upper left corner of the design to the lower right corner of the design it should go thru the "P" of POSTES. If your line goes under the "P" its a fake.

My understanding is the opposite: in the fakes,the diagonal line crosses the middle or top of the P, while in the genuine stamps, the line crosses the bottom of the P. In other words, the Postes is closer to the left side in the fakes.

Thanks---GREADAN ,Its been many years since I worked on them.With my collection and reference books being 1200 miles away you may be correct . Here is a scan I found on my photobucket page of laying out a clear straight edge so you can see the "p" and the angle with clear plastic .

The essays are listed in the Maury catalogue.
I can take a look later if required.

friend e-mailed me ,the first stamp on the left is the fake, the center and left stamps are real as GREADEN posted.

Hi,

Thanks for the advice on these stamps. Any suggestions regarding the French stamp, that seems a bit of a mystery. I showed it to a dealer today and he had never seen one with the word "essai" and zero postage costs.

Forgot to say this is part of a collection that has been boxed away for about 50 years. An ancestor was a tobacconist and stamp dealer, he retired in the 1960s, and then passed his stamps onto my father in the early 1990s. My dad has just not got around to looking into them... so I took up the challenge.

Hence any help much appreciated.....

You can read Eareé's 'Album Weeds' describing the early forgeries of Alsace here:

http://stampforgeries.com/album-weeds-alsace/

Reprints were made with the original background pattern, however the text was newly made. They were made in Hamburg. Reprints can be recognized by the position of the 'P' of 'POSTES', if we draw a line connecting the upper left corner of the containing rectangle to the lower right corner, the line should go through the bottom part of the 'P'. However, in the reprints it will go through just below the center of the 'P'."

On the French stamp the word -ESSAI --means trial or attempt ,so it must be some kind of essay .

Hi,

Thanks guys you have been really helpful.... might post some more stamps for you to look at...

The French stamp, I believe is a training stamp or trial stamp. Any idea on a possible value?

I appreciate this post is old but..
Putting a line through the Alsace stamps to see if they are reprints won't help much
These are the somewhat rare Paris forgeries of 1890 as opposed to the very good 1910 Fourniers
A simple look at the crudeness is all that is needed in this case