White Russia 1919-1921 Issues With Fakes Stamps.

Sorted out these stamps and made more pages for my Cinderella and Forgery collections. This is my first lay out and will improve the pages as I get more and do a better write up as I expand it.

Here is a close up of a regular stamp and a fake .

Hi floortrader,

The 15 kopeck stamp on the left in your picture is usually classified as a forgery.

This value was created later than the other values in the set and used a new design that was based on the earlier one but was not exactly the same.

There are various differences including the shape of the letters T and D in "ATRAD". If you look at an original set the differences in the 15 kopeck design stand out and this is a useful first test when checking a set.

The "fake" on the left has pretty impressive perforations. It would fool nearly everyone. Maybe they got a hold of a real perforator somehow.

thanks NIGELC ,here are the differences in the lettering as you posted .I made notes of what you stated on the page .

Hi,
have some examples of these issues and I would appreciate your opinion of their authenticity - or not.
Thank you for your help!

I know nothing of this issue but any imperforate stamp's authenticity will be in doubt as a single, because of the possibility of a trimmed down perforated stamp. Other that than that, I can't help, but there's a lot of knowledge on this board, and I'm sure someone will have some more information for you.

Plenty more on White Russia here:

https://goscf.com/t/8428#8428

bluejddoug, I feel pretty good about your top right stamp, and not so good about the others. Look at the difference in how the man holds his left hand, and check out the differences between the "T" in "ATRAD" (the right word in the top tablet). floortrader's image at 7:18pm yesterday has two superimposed stamps. The real is underneath the fake. I think your top right stamp matches the bottom stamp in floortrader's image.

All subject to correction by anyone else who wants to chime in.

Continuing the theme...

Yes, the 15k is a special case, and quite easy to spot genuine/forgery- for genuine, the vertical stem of the "T" of "ATRAD" is thin, the serif at the top of the Cyrillic "D" of "ATRAD" does nor touch the pointed tip of the letter, and the left hand of the man is not hanging down as much.

But what about the other four values?

Varro Tyler (Focus on Forgeries c2000) suggests a good look at the woman's face....



Genuine



Closeup genuine Woman's face

Short dash on the woman's chin which does not touch the point of the chin.



Forgery



Closeup Forgery Woman's face

In two of the four Forgery types, a spot of color touches the woman's chin at the chin point. (Shown here)

Third Type Forgery- a dot or dash does not touch the chin line, but there are faint guidelines visible between stamps.

Fourth Type Forgery- No dash on the chin.

If I may make a general comment about showing genuine/forgery stamps-

It is helpful if the stamp image is at a high resolution, or perhaps show part of the stamp in high resolution- just saying.

Super illustrations there, jkjblue.

Excellent JKJ, excellent!

That's really only true when the imperf version is significantly more valuable than the perforated version. Some stamps are more common imperf and the perforated version is the scarcer one. In such cases of course it's always possible that a stamp could be trimmed down, but there would be no incentive for someone to do so.

Thank you for everyone who replied!