Tchong King, Tchongking - Indochine - Forgeries?

I am unable to find these type (without Chinese characters) in any of the major catalogues... but, on the Klaseboer page is mentioned that some Fournier counterfeits of these stamps exist...





I will also need a help to identify the left stamp, and opinion on the blue Mercury (surely not original - is it a reprint or a fake?).

My SG France catalogue states that "Stamps ... overprinted Tchong-King only, in small capitals, in red or black, were sold in Chungking and used for franking letters. They were not, however, officially authorised."

Thank you, GeoffHa. I am curious which catalogue will have more information about them... I have already tried with Scott and Michel... you helped me with your SG France... I will try to see is YT will tell something more.

YT listed them, without any additional notes and specifications... but, it looks that is a little dash between Tchong and king on their sample, which I can't see on my stamps...

Those seem to have the distinguishing features of the work of Fournier's workshop such as the lowest fruit melded with the rim of the horn, and a rather vague hand on the staff. A sharper scan would help.

Here is the real stamp on the left and the Fournier's forgery on the right .From my collection

Your Austria newspaper stamp is a fake .

The red stamp is from POONCH ,it is the green paper variety.

Floortrader has correctly identified the red stamp as from Poonch - it is a 1 Anna value - but we first need to know whether it is printed on laid or wove bâtonné paper. Not a huge difference in values: the first is SG 45 and cat. at £9; the second is SG 50 and cat. at £6.50.

This is a block of SG 50, for comparison

The French Colonials are wrongly attributed to Fournier by a lot of authors (Serrane, Bynof-Smith, Klaesboer etc.)
They were made by Charles Hirschburger.

Floortrader, thumbs up for posting larger images.

Floortrader, thank you for your samples.
Tonymacg, thank you for the scan and identification. Possibly you will know why is (8)5 manuscript marking on this India stamp?



Greaden and ClassicalStamps - thank you both for the observations... I hope that these scans will be better...
the largest I have been able to do with my scanner.

I have no doubt now that those French colonial stamps are from the Fournier/Hirschburger workshop.

Yes, I agree... on the higher-resolution scan, everything is much clearer :)

The '85' was not an official marking. It was probably made by the sender or perhaps by the post office staff.

The Re1 stamp was quite a high value at the time: 32 times the basic letter rate. That is a R(ailway) M(ail) S(service) postmark on the stamp.

Perhaps the '85' is the number of items lodged at the same time for posting. At that time, senders did use a lot of different devices to 'tie' their stamp(s) to the envelope; however, this doesn't seem to tie the stamp.

Sorry I can't be more helpful!

Thank you very much, Tonymacg. Your reply is very helpful.