Madeira 1871-1880 Reprint -- Need Help With Cancel

Greetings!

Needing some help with the cancel on this stamp. I'm told it's either 1) a double cancel, or 2) a fake cancel.



If it's a fake cancel, I can't understand why that would be since it greatly diminished the value of the stamp. If it was canceled twice, can anybody speculate how that might have occurred?

FYI - Just to keep the thread from derailing, I've confirmed that the stamp and overprint are authentic.

Thanks for any thoughts! You folks always seem to have great information!

There is a great thread here from a couple years back that goes into both the overprints and the expected cancels:

https://goscf.com/t/31257

If you haven't seen it, it is worth the read, and has too much information to just repost here, including illustrations.

Note how the 8-bar cancel should have two short middle bars next to the numbers, and you would hope to be able to see something of the numbers from one or another of the cancels.

There are a number of possible reasons why there could be two strikes on one stamp. Hammer bounce is one; going for an adjacent stamp and hitting one twice is another. Unfortunately, covering up the fact that you don't have a genuine hammer might be another.

Thanks Cjd for your input! I'd read that thread but since I can't make out a number on mine, I wasn't sure whether it helped me or not. :(

I have another cancelled Madeira I've tried to compare it to, but the multiple strikes on this one make it really hard to compare. I do see that the size and shape of the bars line up correctly with other cancels. And I'm still stuck with the mystery of why somebody would have fake-canceled this stamp in the first place...

That cancel may of been done on the remaine of the inventory at the post office ,so it could be a C-T-O or done at the printing firm in Portugal .

Thanks for sharing your thoughts floortrader. I hadn't thought of that, didn't realize they'd started such things so early.

Guess I'll just hang onto it until the answer floats to me in my dreams or something.

:)

Just looks like poor strikes, seeing it is a high face value then could have been used on a parcel or large heavy envelope,

Pagoda

Pagoda, thank you for your input! That's what I think, too (as it happens). Sloppy strikes. Unfortunately makes for a problem. Sigh...

Polimom: At first glance, I'll agree that the stamp may be a reprint. May I humbly ask how you've confirmed that the stamp & overprint are authentic? I've got some references on Portuguese & colonies forgeries & reprints and will try to check them out later this weekend (now about 12:45 PM, MDT on Saturday).

Hi Steve --

This stamp is so very perplexing for me, I sent it off to be authenticated not long ago. The opinion stated that the stamp / overprint are genuine, but that the cancel was faked. That opinion has not sat well with me, primarily because it makes no sense to me at all. Why would anyone have faked a cancel on this stamp?

The stamp is fairly difficult to find, the reprints much less so. If you can take a $20 reprint and turn it into a $500 used stamp you've made a good profit. Most of Portugal and colonies were reprinted every 20 years or so from the 1860s into the 20th century.

I agree billsey. And if that authentication had come back saying it was not a reprint, or not Madeira, I'd be sad but I'd have no problem understanding.

But the stamp *without* the cancel catalogues significantly higher than it does with the cancel. That's where I'm confounded.

Myself, I see a sloppy hand on the cancel. At the top right edge, it also looks (to me) like the bars have stopped in front of what would have been (in a neatly applied cancel) the numerals. I've seen other stamps very similar to this one (specifically, illegible cancels) that are apparently authentic. I really just want to understand what it is about this particular cancel (that was obviously struck more than once) that would make it fake.

Am I just not understanding something obvious?

Editing to add: Yay! 50th post!

If the stamp and the overprint come back authentic ,then the cancel which doesn't have the 51 in the center ,then as I said earlier it was canceled on remaining stock ,for what reason a person would purchase a high value stamp and then cancel it . I say it is a C-T-O by the post office or the printer cleaning out inventory ,for sure the printer can't sell mint stamps but can sell canceled stamps not valid for postage .

floortrader -- maybe that's what happened. Is it reasonable for a person to ask an authenticator for further explanation about an opinion? (Does this often happen?)

POLIMON-----The only time a explanation from a authenticator is asked for, is when the item is unique and there is no research to be found ,but on a regular stamp I don't think its the proper thing to do.

floortrader, thank you for your patience with my many questions and for sharing your thoughts and knowledge. I admit to being frustrated, but that's always true for me when I don't understand something. My goal, always, is to learn.

The most interesting part about this stamp, I think, is that it languished for over 60 years in an envelope -- a debt payment made by a dealer to someone he owed money to, back in the 1950s. The person kept it tucked away with nothing but a small notation of its catalogue number and the CV at some point (back when it was $50 or so). It came to me in a box of some of this person's philatelic effects, and I was intrigued. It has a history, and I really am kind of sad that it turned out this way -- even though I never knew either of those people.

The expertizers suggested I donate the stamp to their collection, but I think I will keep it since the story continued. Ya know?

Thanks again, floortrader and everybody.

Polimon,

who was the expertiser,

Pagoda