Wituland / Swahililand: Help Needed

The stamps were genuinely used. There are forgeries. Genuine designs tend to be unsquare/crooked with imperfect edges often enough, where you might expect it would be the other way around.


Here's an exhibit of covers that may be the bulk of what exists. Note that the reason for so many issues are that the local ruler didn't like what was first issued and had the design changed. And changed.

https://corinphila.ch/en/_galleries...how&id=1826#

Katz's stamp looks like a forgery. Only one master was used for all stamps in a pane/sheet and text shapes should all be essentially the same; this doesn't match that well. The cancel is close but doesn't match the one used on the covers in the exhibit.

There are fairly convincing arguments, by Mr. Katz in his response.
Academia

Me thinks the Katz is out of the bag for these stamps.

There are a number of problems with Katz's arguments that tend to talk around the subjects rather than dissecting them or proving outright fraud.
• Katz doesn't seem to like the idea of the sultan's interference in the design since the sultan wasn't interested in philately. Absolute rulers do what they want to do. The 1961 Trucial States issue is an example of that. It was an issue created by the British postal administration running POs in the region. The sultan of Abu Dhabi, the big dog of the states, refused to use them. And Abu Dhabi had one of only three civilian POs in the region. The first 1966 surcharged issue for South Arabia for the Kathiri State of Seiyun was reported to have been protested by the sultan as having the Arabic text too small and unreadable. That accounts for the second 1966 surcharged set with larger Arabic text.
• There have been many such shady figures as the Denhardts in the post offices of the world before and since, that have created both real and fake postage stamps. Recently, I ran across some British regionals from the 2000s printed by none other than Questa/House of Questa. That is a Clive Feigenbaum company, one of several with interconnected ownership, that have been merrily cranking out bogus topicals and purposely-made errors of issued stamps only available through certain confederates. Feigenbaum is dead today but his companies live on. One would assume a security problem with such shenanigans in the past and present, but apparently it's not a concern with the British PO.
*All those different values on different colored papers: I think you can't judge on that basis because similar things have been fully accepted before and after. Yes, made to sell to collectors, who perhaps didn't bite because they were bland locals.
• Excessive issue? But so have been many, many other issues from other countries that are embraced as legitimate. From the French colonial and independent country issues from the late1940s on, what use has there been for the low centime values in CFA francs? They are essentially not seen postally used because there was no legitimate postal use possible for them - negligible value. Clearly, those were produced to sell to packet makers and approval dealers. Intermediate values in definitive sets (like the Togo definitives we talked about earlier) might have been issued in anticipation of future rate increases but in many cases, they just fill out mint sets. And then what were the US Columbian and Trans-Mississippi issues not to mention modern issues like the Legends of the West pane with 50 different designs and issued twice? There were many complaints about all of these at the time of issue, but today complaints are more about not getting your example certified 100J.
• Confusing colors vs. denominations? Ah, Katz mourns the lack of good color vision in primitive third-world subhumans. If there was even a post office for general use, the stamps would be dispensed and applied by a clerk so it would be all on his head for getting things right or wrong when the auditors came around. There are only 3 reds; those are pretty distinct to my eye.
• The rate card shown is indeed ridiculous with an under 5 gram rate and 5 gram rate steps. But if you've never run a postal system before, you could and would do (dumb) things like that.
• Katz fails to mention forgeries at all and has misidentified the forgery pictured above. I feel his credibility is the one that's gone.

Katz does a good job of casting reasonable doubt. On the other side of the coin the only argument for the stamps being genuine postal issues with purpose is that they exist.

The authenticity is interesting.
As an observer, all I can suggest, for those
that may find this interesting, or at best, Important,
is to read the published works, and for the individual, to make up her, or his own mind
on what they believe to be the truth as they see it.

We should never denounce serious study, the effort and time expended
in finding knowledge on any particular discipline.

Mr. Katz, from what I have read, has published 5 papers on Wituland
February 2019
November 13th 2019
November 27th 2019
April 3rd 2020
October 2022

An extensive list of sources is appended in the Feb 2019 paper.
I found it a fascinating read.

There is much lacking in the quoted Katz pieces copied to SCF including references to primary source materials, either in print or online. EDIT: They might be his in other studies; we shall see. They are indeed in the February 2019 Academia.edu piece; sorry, I thought you were referring to London Philatelist journal dates.

"Serious study" is a matter of opinion. Certainly the many published works of Erich von Daeniken and Gavin Menzies can be considered serious studies, but they are products of heavily massaged facts to support personal opinions presented then as fact.

Where are the thousands of Witu stamps on piece that Farley Katz says exist? I've never seen any in over 30 years in the stamp business or even longer as a collector except for the misidentified forgery shown in this thread, until now. Contrariwise, I've seen a fair number of Malakote fakes over the years and there are also lots of them on ebay at the moment.

EDIT: I can only find three of his articles on Academia.edu with one of his accounts blank. What am I doing wrong?

Perhaps Tim will chime in with any information he's uncovered since he bought the original collection.

I got them in the right place in my collection , I am in agreement with Farley P. Katz , . He states they are philatelic creations .They will stay in my CINDERELLA COLLECTION

To new collectors and visitors here ,this is not the first time I seen this stuff ,which I call " fun and games" . I also have a few albums of this from the same time period . What is being done is create bonus stamps then you create album pages for your stamp creations . This was done on German States Locals and Indian States ,there is a lack of the real stamps ,so you create your own stuff and then you make pages so you can sell albums to mount them in.
Besides they got one picture in the above album and the stamps mounted are wrongly pictured they really need the stamp laying on its side and I mounted mine wrong {,the script should read downward not upward }.

It's been some time since I dropped in on Stamp Community. I published a second article about the Wituland stamps, "Wituland Revisited," which is posted at https://www.academia.edu/63478245/W...nd_Revisited In that article I expanded on the analysis in great detail. My conclusion remains they are bogus stamps pasted in the 1930s on genuine pre-stamp covers or on thousands of pieces of paper of a variety of colors and papers.

A member asked "Where are the thousands of Witu stamps on piece that Farley Katz says exist?" In 1934, Robert Lerche, one of the "discoverers" of the Witu stamps and a dealer who authenticated/expertized many Behrens albums of complete used sets of the stamps on piece and published lengthy booklets about them, wrote that 2,330 used examples existed. In 1950, Dr. Eduard Ey published a census of all values and issues which total 3,357 used stamps. See table attached.

As shown in the table, at least 20 complete sets of all the 96 stamps exist, in used condition. The number that exist have no relation to denomination (high denominations often more common than low) or the time the stamp was supposedly valid (some stamps that were supposedly valid for a few days survive in numbers greater than stamps valid for about a year).

I found online images of some 244 used stamps on piece, the sources cited in the article. Currently, there are two different, handmade Behrens albums for sale online (one at a German auction house; the other ebay Germany) each with complete sets of all 96 stamps, every one used and on piece, plus bonus photographs of additional stamps. Michel lists all 96 stamps in used condition, everyone on piece.