Expertizing Berlin Overprints

Last year I purchased the first two sets of Germany-Berlin overprints (Scott 9N1-20 (black overprint) and 9N21-34 (red overprint)) from Earl Apfelbaum at auction. They did not come with expert certificates, but Apfelbaum has a lifetime guaranty on all of the stamps they sell.

I would like to get these sets expertized now and was wondering which organizations have a good reputation in connection with these particular issues. In doing some background research, I get the sense that these overprints are very "forge-able" and that it is really difficult to distinguish the real stamps from fakes.

Any advice and/or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

For expertising, contact one of BPP's listed Berlin experts:

http://www.bpp.de

If you want to take a deeper look yourself, you need:

- Scanner
- Photoshop
- High resolution scans of proven genuine stamps

The key is the angle of the "BERLIN" surcharge. The process is explained by Oppitz in "WISSEN SCHUTZT VOR SCHADEN" Vol 3.

Thanks, ClassicalStamps. I was hoping that someone could recommend a U.S.-based expert, but it seems from what I've read that a certificate from a German expert carries the most weight and is more readily accepted by the industry.

Practically speaking, U.S. experts are almost worthless for German materials. You might get by with one for lower-value material in a U.S.-only market, but you would need a German cert to ever realize the true value of the stamps.

Also, in my experience, U.S. sources have a disturbing habit of issuing incorrect certs on German materials if the stamps are from a very specialized or heavily-forged collecting area.

Thanks, Postmaster. That is clearly the sentiment I am discovering as I do more research on this topic.

I disagree ,I will and many others will accept a APS cert. There have been problem with certs . in the past but I will support the excellent work coming from Mercer Bristow the Director of Expertizing at the APS . Now that's not to say that there is some very difficult philatelic items that need a high quality committee to review it . But come on a overprint is something a APS cert . is more than adequate.

I respectfully disagree. I've had too many bad experiences with APS certs on German materials. I've had 8 items with good APS certs that turned out to be fakes. Two of them were so obvious that I was able to tell they were fakes before I sent them for BPP confirmation, merely by checking my own reference materials.

From a resale perspective, if you have a valuable item, you won't be able to get value for it in the German market with an APS cert.

WRT the Berlin overprints, there are 5 recognized valid overprint types, and 60+ known fraudulent overprint types. It's a very specialized area.

My stamps were received today by Andreas Schlegel, one of BPP's recognized Berlin experts. I'll post my results when they are received. Wish me luck!

Just to close the loop on this thread -- today I received my Berlin overprints back from Andreas Schlegel, one of the Berlin experts for the BPP, and they were certified as genuine! I am very relieved and excited.

Classical Stamps -- thanks for the recommendation.

I highly recommend this process for anyone who is thinking about using the BPP. They were very responsive and easy to deal with, particularly since I do not speak German.

Neeskens,

Good news indeed :-)

Hard to beat German efficiency.

Great news. If you have the time or inclination to post an image or two, I can think of at least three people who would enjoying looking...

CJD -- Your wish is my command!

Berlin 1948 Black Overprints (all stamps are Mint/NH; the gum faults cited in the certificate are minor gum cracking that is barely visible to naked eye):

Berlin 1949 Red Overprints:

Neeskens,


Can I get a 1200 dpi scan (high quality JPEG (10 out of 10) - low/little compression) of both pages/series? I would like to have images of complete genuine sets.

Classical Stamps:

Would love to help you out but I am useless at the finer points of scanning. Can you walk me through it?

N

Not knowing how your scanner is set up kinda makes it difficult to give you any pointers.
But generally, place the stamp in a dealer card with black background, click preview, crop the blinking dashed lines to exclude un wanted images ( all that black background )so that your inage shows a little black border. Select resolution ( 1200 dpi requested ) and click scan. You may have to re-size your image as this site will only allow images of 100KB or less.

I copied one of your scans, a file of 58.1KB. Opened it with MS paint, croped just the card the stamps are on, increased the size 150% and now its a file of 85.9 KB.