Counterfeit Covers

I've never posted before on this forum so please excuse me if I'm "plowing old ground"

I will post two covers from ebay. One is a stated counterfeit that sold for $18. The other is supposedly an authentic cover now selling for over $100. My question is: Are these two covers easy to verify the authenticity or has the printing of counterfeits reached the stage where engraving is difficult to tell from pixelated printing?

Hard to tell from the size of the scans but the catalog value of the top one (If it were real) would be astronomical. The perfs should be a dead give-away.

They are both beautiful covers, even if one is not 'real'.
How does one counterfeit a cover though?
Does one, make their own stamps and how do they fake the flag cancel?
It's very interesting! Thank you for sharing!
Sue
SueStamps

irisgarden - fwiw - I have seen reproductions of the c13 - c15 american zepps that did not have "reproduction" or "facsimile" on the back, however they were about 2mm smaller than the real items. The ones I have seen that were the correct size did have "facsimile" on the back. You can the find lots of fake stamps on ebay.

for example:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1930-GRAF-Z...em5882b58b4f

regards, Theron.

Iris - nice looking pair but....
the diamond margin design on the top cover is modern, as is the paper type, likely printed in 1950s or later;flag cancel without a dial is between scarce and unusual to completely bogus; both cancels and the hadstamps are copies, as are the two flight handstamps. Stall also notes the perfs are way off. And is there any possible need for that much postage on any flight cover??
A quick glance... the lower cover appears to be ok.
Bill

These "facscimile" covers are digitally-created. They are NOT copies of original covers (at least any I've seen). The sellers create them using mostly their creative imagination, often adding nifty advertising and other embellishments to make the copies more enticing. There is (unfortunately) no ebay rule that disallows the sale of these so long as the sellers describe accurately what they are and stamps on the back what they are. I believe these have the "facscimile" printed on the back (faintly, in light gray, as I recall, making the word a bit difficult to see. I believe they are easy to identify as the printing is so totally different from original items. I once wrote to the main lister of these to try to get him to reconsider his descriptions. I would like them to be described for what they really are - copies. The word "facscimile" is too generous in my view. My unproven guess is that at least SOME of these have been sold to novices as "real", which is a real shame. Yet not a whole lot ethically different then selling fake coils to buyers for high prices.

The top cover looks magnificient, with the flag cancel (and no dial) at far left, and VARICK STA NY postmark with wavy line cancel (reproduction of an International Flier machine cancel device). Too bad the cancels are not authentic. NO machine cancel and hub (which contains the cancellation and the postmark dial)in our machine cancel records could produce the cancels in this manner regardless of the authenticity of the paper and stamps.

Both cancels are in the wrong position for these two machine fed devices. The old cancelling machines are engineered to apply the cancel in the same spot, every time. This is their 'sweet spot.'

The flag cancel would have been applied by an American Machines Company device. The flag device is made to apply the cancel in the top right corner of the envelope. The machine's rotating hub works with a postmark dial that fits into a slot, and its absence would usually leave an ink mark or impression to the left of the flag. It is possible that when the cover was fed into the machine, there was a jam with another cover on top of it, and another cover blocked the application of the ink from the dial. STILL one has to explain the very low application of the NY International machine cancel waivy lines at the bottom of the stamps. The International Flier applies its cancel in the same 'sweet spot' as the American Machines Company device.

One would have to explain how the wavy line machine cancel was applied so low. There are two possibilities: (a) the cover was first folded in half, and hand fed into the machine in a folded manner in a manner to get the 'sweet spot' lower into the cover. But the stamps, which are canceled along their bottom, show no such fold and presumabley neither does the cover; and (b) a special hub was created which lowered the 'sweet spot' of the cancel to the middle of the cover. These hubs are not cheap, and it would be unprecedented for just the single cover to have the NY cancel be the only example of this modified hub.

It is noteworthy that by 1930, there were no flag cancel devices used in New York City. The only flag cancel machine used with these Zepps was at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Frederick Langford studied flag cancels all of his life, and he reported in his Flag Cancel Encyclopedia that ONLY the Lakehurst flag has been seen on the 1930 Zepps. Each flag cancel metal die was hand engraved. Each flag canel is therefore unique in variations. It is hard for me to tell, but it does look like the producer of this flag cancel was careful to use an actual Lakehurst flag to reproduce BUT in copying the flag, failed to copy the very top of the flag cancel pole (called a staff). There should be a cap (called a truck) at the top of the staff. Look carefully at the top left corner of the flag cancel. The top of the staff is missing! So here is a third way to verify this cover. Is the flag cancel authentically from Lakehurst!?!

So from a machine cancel review, the top cover is a counterfeit or cinderella regardless of the authenticity of the stamps and age of the envelope.

Cheers!