Germany --Iposta --Forgery

New addition to my forgery collection ,notice the stamps does not say DEUTSCHES REICH on the souvenir sheet like the real stamps on the side . This is a modern forgery .

That sheet was distributed as a souvenir at the Internationale Briefmarkenausstellung (International Stamp Exhibition), or IBRA, in Munich, 1973.

Nice one!

Would that really be a forgery?

Peter

This souvenir sheet was mounted in a German collection as the 1930 Intl. Phil. Exhib . sheet and none of the catalogs state that a fake is out there to fool collectors .I will keep it in a forgery collection and keep it here for any collectors doing a web search .Thanks for the additional info . I will added that to the page .

The DEUTSCHES REICH tablet being changed to IBRA MUNCHEN pretty much rules out any sort of forgery or fakery. Pretty hard to miss, no?

In modern Germany, it seems that pretty much "anything goes" as far as making reproductions of classic stamps. There are reproductions to fool the collector (forgeries) and there are reproductions that are collectibles in their own right (private reprints). The longer I collect Germany, the more confused I am about where the line is that separates the two.

With the IBRA MUENCHEN sheet, the clear imprint and offset printing definitely make this NOT a forgery.

Below is an officially sanctioned reprint of Michel #1 that was printed for the 19th World Postal Congress in Hamburg in 1984. The 2nd image is a close up of just the stamp. There were other world classics which were reproduced for this gathering, but I think that this is the "best", or most dangerous Nachdruck (reprint) of the bunch. The wavy line watermark is to alert the collector I'm supposing.

In the 19th century, it was perfectly acceptable to print forgeries of "hard to find" stamps. J. Walter Scott (yes, THAT Scott) was a producer of such material. According to Varro Tyler in his "Philatelic Forgers: Their Lives and Works", Scott circulated postal cards seeking printing plates and dies for his reprinting work.

Wouldn't the stamp sheet in the first post be considered a Cinderella? It's certainly not a forgery.

It's that terminology thing again. I just love the way it differs from place to place !




Just an attractive Exhibition souvenir sheet, a great Cinderella item for those that collect such a topic/theme/thematic. A forgery is made to deceive as well as make money.




Then it was most definitely incorrectly mounted !




Very nice reproductions but in no way are they dangerous. The Exhibition organizers would not have allowed it, nor the UPU. All the reproductions of this special pack of sheets are underprinted.




Excuse my surprise at this statement but when was it ever acceptable to print forgeries ? Do you mean the authorities turned a blind eye ? Which of course they did not. It is more acceptable today, in the 21st Century with all the modern technology and not enough policing. And look at the number of dealers and auction houses selling forgeries of both old and modern stamps......and nothing is done to deter it.
Acceptable ? Definitely not.
Just an aside. Shill bidding was also not acceptable and research will tell us that Mr.J.W. Scott was not allowed back in the UK after shill bidding on his own lots at a Christie's auction !
Acceptable? Definitely not.




So yes it would, most definitely. But to the purist Cinderella collector, forgeries also fall into that collecting domain.After all, they are not postally valid !

Londonbus1

Play all the word games you want .....if it is the same size as the original and the same "watermark" and the same color ,Then I can fool most people with it {but not all the "experts" here} .It was designed and made the way it was so buyers at the show knew exactly what can be done with it . Don't have time for this , maybe I will go sell these valuable stamps on ebay today .

OOOPS ------Those are not forgeries according to the people on this board ,they were printed by the Greece Postal Authority ,so they were used as postage and sold by the post office .......A forgery is ANYTHING ....anything that can be sold for what it is not .

Those are cut-outs of stamps issued by Greece and have nothing whatsoever to do with forgeries!

A legitimate postage stamp issued by a legitimate country is not a forgery no matter how you cut the stamp up.

floortrader, I take your point, and I like what you are trying to do. When a classic stamp's image can be cut out from a current stamp and sold on ebay, it is potentially a problem for newer collectors.

The Greek stamps probably meet the definition of "fake" as used in Scott. A genuine stamp has been altered to make it appear to be something it is not.

It is interesting to see what can be modified to create different material. This is the same approach that the 'bus takes with the Penny Black "colour trials" proofs, and it is useful.

It would be nice if "fake" and "forgery" and "counterfeit" and "reprint" would all be used by everyone in the same way, but that ain't how English works, and not everyone agrees on what they mean, anyway. I'll try to cut you some slack with the terminology.

Thanks CJD

(My emphasis)

Not everything that emanates from a post office is necessarily legitimate. The notorious Missing Die forgeries of Jammu & Kashmir



(4 Anna Missing Die on the left; genuine on the right)

were inserted by corrupt State Post Office workers into the official supplies sent from the Jammu & Kashmir Post Office to dealers in the 1870s and 1880s. The corrupt workers of course pocketed the difference

Then, what do we do about issues that were disowned by the issuing authority? The 1935 set of Orchha State was regularly sold to dealers at dramatic discounts to face value. These 25 Rupee stamps were certainly not sold for 100 Rupees (which would have paid the wages of an Orchha State postman for 3 months)



As an interim measure, the State authorities began backstamping stamps sold legitimately at face value over the post office counter. These 10 Rupee stamps



were actually sold for 10 Rupees each: they have the State seal on the back:



The set was eventually withdrawn and disowned by the Orchha authorities (and replaced with a very dreary set).

So we must be extremely careful with terminology here