Fake And Forgeries: Stuff To Look Out For

Here are a few additions to my Fakes and Forgery Collection . These are singel color stamps that had the centers CUT-OUT and a different color stamp glue to the back ,given a bi-color look .Notice on some the second row of perforations .

Thankyou Floortrader, This will give a lot of people knowledge that will help them to not be ripped off, I thought my eye's were playing up on me for the last 2 stamps (bottom middle and right) until I read about the perfs.
Thankyou again, Turbo

Thanks Floortrader

A few months ago I picked up a couple of Mafeking siege forgeries. The stamps look very similar to the real thing but have a rather more blurred appearance. They key is the postmark. Genuine stamps have the postmark more-or-less centrally placed, and the letters less than 1/2mm from the outer circle on the postmark. This one doesn't:




The genuine one (a paler blue shade) is shown for comparison. However, unless you know these details, the forgeries are easily passed off as genuine as I have found out to my cost.

floortrader, Thanks for a most interesting and informative presentation of these artistic fakes.

Fakes that they are, I can't help but to think that perhaps the person who made them, didn't intend to fool anyone, but made them to fit his/her artistic appeal.

They are artistically appealing, IMO, but crudely made; by a child?
No attempt was made to come close to matching up the two different cancellations on each stamp. Perhaps a school project?

Hi Tim H, and thank you for your additions to floortrader's post. You surely must have done a lot of research on and/or have a history with this stamp.

At first I couldn't help to think, how could the centering of a cancellation position prove anything being hand stamped and all.

After comparing the fake with a genuine you posted, I can see the differences
and can also see that the letter "i" is displaced and/or upside down doted "i".

I would sure like to see comments from other members on this one.

Thanks for your comments Mudhut. Fakes and forgeries often provide the most fun for research. Here's another couple of interesting stamps. The first is an overprint of British Bechuanaland on Cape of Good Hope, 5 shillings, from 1885, watermarked "Cabled Anchor" like all the other issues in this set. The font is exact. All looks genuine? No. The 5 shilling value was never considered by the post office and desn't exist. I bought it as a forgery.



The next is from East Africa. The British East Africa Company, which ran the region on behalf of the British Crown Administration, issued a number of hand-surcharged stamps of different values in 1891 as it slid into deeper and deeper financial difficulties. The next one is a genuine stamp which I bought with certs. There are a number of well-studied variations in both the signatory and the thickness of the nib used.



The following gem was sold as part of a lot a few years ago by one of the most "reputable" auction houses in the world (no name, no pac drill but it begins with S and ends in K). It is such a childish forgery that I find it difficult to believe that their "experts" didn't know what was being sold. It sits nicely in my "fakes and Forgeries" section.



The forger's art never ceases to surprise and amaze. I bought some Stellaland forgeries from an expert in South Africa, and unless I have his crib sheet I really can't tell the difference between the genuine and forged issues.

Floortrader, thanks for sharing these interesting forgeries.

Tim, do your Stellaland forgeries fit this description:
http://stampforgeries.com/forged-st...-stellaland/
or is it another kind of forgery?

Wow! Spot on! This is a great link, thank you very much. I will explore it further. My dealer thinks the Stellaland forgeries first appeared in the 1890s in Cape Town. They are very high quality.

Unfortunately a lot of those running around out there, and particularly on ebay.

Hi ec. Thanks for the heads-up on E-bay forgeries. I hope no-one falls for them, but forgeries are as old as the stamp-collecting industry itself and are only there to make money from those of us who don't know any better.

For quite some time, the Scouts on Stamps Society International would "alert" members and ebay to possible forgeries on ebay. I've let my membership lapse, so I'm not sure they still do. I'd assume so.

There are collectors who love "artistic" items like this, and they will frequently sell when properly described. It had a certain popularity back in the 20's and 30's; I have seen numerous US stamps made up the same way. Only a very novice collector might be fooled into thinking they were rarities or think of them as forgeries.

Revcollector ----I got to tell you a story about crappy forgeries and who is getting fooled . --------About 12 years ago some guy in Florida started to sell really bad computer generated stamps on ebay . Well this set off a firestorm of protest and postings on stamp chat rooms .There was hours and hours of postings on the evil of this e-bay seller and every expert or senior philatelist was ranting and raving about all the poor stamp collectors were losing money and didn't know what they were buying .This went on for days and days with dozens of notices going to the APS,Ebay and everyone else the poor lost souls starting in the hobby were being ripped-off .
After about two months and nothing getting done about this seller of cheap computer fakes ,I was getting tired of it ,so I purchased a few lots so I would have a record of them before he was shut down ,it was $20.00 or $25.00 for a few hundred stamps ,I got those, plus a few hundred extras in full sheets of another dozen stamps . After more ranting and ravings by others on chat boards about the purchase .I took a more interest in who was buying this worthless material .
That's when I noticed and posted what needed to be said and that is what ticked off many philatelist and then they all started attacking me ,since they were not getting anywhere with this seller or with E-bay. I noticed thru the ebay feedback that it was not the poor beginner or newbie buying this trash ,it was experience E-bay sellers and buyers who had hundreds if not thousands of ebay transactions feedbacks and the shocker was a lot of these sales were repeat sales with positive feedbacks ..........well that drove the philatelic community nuts ......after that they went after me with a vengeance and sometimes my name still gets trashed .But I have seen that computer trash showing up in public stamp auctions in the bigger lots . SO I BELIEVE THERE IS A MARKET FOR THE TRASH ,and there is a ready group of sellers eager to service and sell that junk to willing buyers .

But the items in the first post are not "trash", they are long established artistic curiosities that have long been collected. They were not created for fraudulent purposes.
I remember the PC generated images, and there have been plenty since. If people want to buy worthless crap you can't stop them. People have to want to be educated. Sometimes I tell people that they are selling fakes and sometimes I don't. There is only so many times that I want to bang my head against a wall on a given day.

I totally agree with Revcollector that these items are certainly not trash. They are so obviously fakes that there simply can't be any intention to deceive. There is some artistic merit in these!

Hi Floortrader! You sure garnered great feed backs on this thread!

I relished each one and visited Classical Stamps' link. Wow!

I hope that more and more members will post their Fakes here.

A pic of my fake GUAM overprint that was ID'ed by some of our members:




One can see (barely see) the lines in the frame nearly touching the lower left of the G, that with a genuine overprint, would have made this fake Guam Scott # 9 a fairly expensive stamp.

Should you ever publish a book on fakes, you definitely have my permission to use this fake Guam #9 picture. No credit needed.