Saxony Sc#1

Gotcha. The number being referred to is the number of the original, not a forgery number. Haha.. boy do I sound like a rookie.
Your explanation did help, thanks peter!

Here is the 9th forgery of the ten known types ,as you been told by others yours is a common forgery .

Here are a few more of the known forgeries types of this stamp

Petert4522 wrote that some persons collect forgeries. Count me among those. Fournier forged most of the early crown issues of the Portuguese colonies, that first came out in 1877. I have quite a few of those, especially from Portuguese India. They all occupy prominent places in my P & C albums, identified as such. I have genuine copies of most of them; regretfully, some of the originals are both expensive and seldom seen in this country.

And, I will agree that this has been an informative thread. I have some classic German state issues; not this Saxony one. I am reminded to consult the Serrane Guide; published by the APS; when I get around to mounting them.

GotStamps5: welcome to the site. And no need to feel like a rookie; asking questions is how one gains valuable knowledge.

Floortrader, I think Mestal departed SCF company more than a year ago--his last post and visit was March 26, 2014. So, I don't think he'll see your, fully justified, admonition.

Yea, sorry...I posted in this thread, when it was fresh. So, I re-posted here with my same stamp cleaned. Not intending to revisit some of the shenanigans.

Great collection of forgeries, Floortrader. Do you (or do you intend to) display your forgery collection on your own website? I'd love to have access to a quick reference.

Brian

Referencing the different "numbers" of the forgeries...it is necessary to note the resource when identifying a forgery by a number, as each resource uses its own system for distinguishing between the various forgeries of a particular stamp.

In the two recent occurrences here, postmasterGS mentioned that it was Type XII in the GPS Reference Manual of Forgeries, while floortrader mentions Robert B. Earée, who put together the ancient, but valuable, Album Weeds.

Some of the old writers started with the "best" forgery first and went down the list from there, describing others known to them. That is far from universal, though.

Certain forgeries are very collectible and sell for nice prices. I keep the ones I find, but I don't intentionally seek them out, myself. Sometimes, it feels like I am intentionally seeking them out, but I'm not...

Keep in mind that in the early 20th century, you could obtain a price list of available forgeries, and for a few francs you could get a second-choice forgery, or you could spend a few extra francs and get a first-choice forgery (i.e., of better quality).

For many collectors this was the only way to fill spaces, and no doubt most of those viewed it as perfectly legitimate.

Forgeries are part of Postal history so they will be collected whether intentionally or not. I have quite a few crude ones but I keep them for reference. It's only when they are passed on as the real thing when they raise the philatelic eyebrow.

Rileysan -----Yes , plan to have someone write the program so I can put a display together of both forgeries and Cinderella stamps ,just to let everybody know I purchased the major part of the James Czyl collection , I purchased the first part in St Louis from Regency Stamp Auctions ,then went to Washinton D.C. to buy a large part of the the second part . Yesterday by phone I purchased at auction the third part on the phone bidding ,the auction was in Grand Rapids Mich . .
I hope to start sharing that material soon . First thing is to straighten out and classife what I purchased .I don't want to say anything negative about his collecting method ,since he isn't around anymore but it was not easy to make sense of all the nice material which he spend a life time collecting ,just ending up in all kinds of pages ,stockbooks , dealer cards and glassines . Give me time and will post here as I work on it .

I will chime in on this old topic. I was just looking for images of various old stamps & came across this thread. I am not an expert in anything but I have collected stamps for ½ a century. Both old stamps, like Saxony #1, & old forgeries of old stamps are documents, artifacts of a past world. They are all collectable if someone wants to put them in his or her collection, & they all have a value if someone wants to buy them & finds someone else who can sell one. Some forgeries look better than the real stamp & I suspect some may be more valuable than the real stamp, such as forgeries of German stamps made by the Allies in WW2.
While here I'll comment on the various varieties of a given stamp type. Generally, especially in the classical stamp producing period, the producers of stamps did not produce the catalogues or generate the numbers & letters used to identify the different types. The realm of stamp collectors devises the identifying numbers & letters, & lays them on top of the various different types that are found on the market.
The Kingdom of Saxony in 1850 did not set out to make a Michel # 1c. It just made 3 pfennige stamps for its people to use on letters. For various production reasons there were varieties in the color, maybe intended, maybe not. Collectors value some varieties more than others generally because some are rarer than others. In an absolute sense, there is no definitive list of types as there can be as many types as there are individual stamps. Michel says Saxony produced 463,118 stamps that Michel calls #1. Thereafter a cataloger decided to apply the name brick red to one color variety & the name stuck. This is helpful to those of us who collect so we can arrange our stamps but we should take the absolute nature of the catalogue number with a grain of salt.