Don and others, I generally collect British (Empire) South/Central and Eastern Africa pre-1935. Forgeries and reprints are rife in many of these countries. Transvaal is by far the worst, and could be studied for years: Sperati, Fournier and Oneglia have all been there. Stamps are forged, overprints are forged, covers are forged.
Mafeking is also rife with forgeries, many of which were brought home by soldiers who were themselves involved in the siege.
All Stellaland postal issues were forged within a couple of years of issue, more than likely by the company in Cape Town which printed the original stamps!
Whole issues like Schweizer Renecke, Rustenburg and Wolmaransstadt are surrounded by an air of dubious legality. Many of thre commanding officers were also keen timbrologists.
Orange Free State has also been forged, although not as extensively as I would have expected given the high proportion of overprints in this country's issues.
Griqualand West is easy ground for the forger, and caveat emptor for buying these on auction sites. I have as many forgeries as genuine stamps!
Moving further north, the British Central Africa 1895 high values (£1-£10) are widely forged but easily recogniseable. Many forgeries exist of the British East Africa Company "Light and Liberty" issues, both overprinted and unoverprinted. Oddly enough, there are very, very few forgeries on the market of the much more collectible "Mombasa Provisionals" (SG 20-26) which were issued as manuscript surcharges in 1891 as the British East Africa Company was going down the pan, even though these seem to me to be much easier to produce. As you have seen in an earlier post, Sudan overprints (SG 1-9) are widely forged, as are most of the early Egypt issues from 1866 to 1875.
My absolute favourite forgeries are two Zululand stamps (illustrated), which illustrates the sheer ingenuity and creative genius of the forger. These are originally from Ceylon, have been bleached and the new colours applied. However, the postmark is the giveaway, as these types of postmark were never used in Zululand.
Cleaned high value fiscal stamps are commonly found in Natal, Rhodesia (British South Africa Company), British Central Africa / Nyasaland and the many manifestations of East Africa. Oddly enough, Bechuanaland's high value stamps fiscally used don't appear very often as cleaned fiscals, possibly because the stamps themselves are light in colour and can't be cleaned easily without raising suspicions.
Court cancellations, fiscal and diplomatic cancellations are often passed off as genuine postal cancellations in Rhodesia, British Central Africa and Kenya & Uganda. I've bought several of these items only to find out later that I had been deceived.
Elsewhere, it seems that anything with an overprint will be forged: Crete, Batum (don't buy anything at all from Batum unless you have a recent certificate!), early Ethiopia, early Estonia and all of the Caucasian state issues 1918-1926. Iceland, fortunately, is largely off the radar although Sperati has forged the first 1873 definitive issue (very collectible if you can find them). Some of the Iceland "I GILDI" overprints are suspect although these are more likely to be contemporary philatelic creations rather than later forgeries.
I have a small "back of the book" section on forgeries. It's not as extensive as some other members on this forum, but it's fun to keep them quarantined and safe.
Posted 11/03/2015 09:10 am
