Spain Collection Just Acquired

Well, Soccerfan, if you like the Spanish women dress set, you can get very easily for about 3 or 4 €, the whole 53 stamps mint set (VFU it's more intersting). But you can even get ir cheaper, as mint Spanish stamps of the 60's, 70's and 80's sell below face value. And this set has a mere 1.8 € total face value.
In fact 1955-1995 mint Spanish stamps, except for some few series, are worth next to nothing. There's a huge offer of older people trying to get rid of their collections and not may takers. I see that, every Sunday at Barcelona's stamp market.

As for the Jaxom 100 purchase. I'ts hard to say. I don't collect Spain and I'm not an expert on that country. But being a stamp collector living in Barcelona most of my life and having friends who actuallly know very much on the subject, I know some facts:
The XIX century Spanish stamps have been extenssively forged. So, I would mistrust of anything been offered too cheap. The barred and holed stamps, are just space-fillers. Anyway, you just have the cheap values of some series; some look nice, but are not worth too much and I don't see much resale value on them.
I've not very clear who has made the big bussiness, the buyer or the seller. But I've my guess...

Here is an enlarged photo of the Spain #69.
It does not look like a color proof. It does not have the sharpness.
Looking at a couple of other examples online, it does look genuine.
The center photo seems to be off center a bit on most stamps of this issue that I have looked at.

This color proof for this stamp is very very often misidentified online. Only rely on the major dealers or auctions houses for identifying this stamp properly when listed as an individual stamp.

As Blaamand and I noted, and spain_1850 confirmed, the stamp you have is NOT Spain #69 in the Scott catalog. The colors listed for a genuine #69 in the Scott catalog are blue and rose, where BLUE is the color of the frame. Any 12¢ postage stamp of this design which has a different color frame is either a proof or a forgery or something else, but not #69.

I wasn't sure if it was a color proof or color essay or..., but I defer to spain_1850's identification of it as a color proof.

Don't let it bother you. There are plenty of other nice stamps in the lot! Enjoy those.

Wow. I cannot believe I missed the blue and rose thing. I looked right at it in the catalog and missed it. There are a few miscatagorized stamps of this issue on ebay. Had one with blue border been there, it would have rang a big bell in my head. lol.

Here is a portion of the relevant page from the 1960 "Catalogo Galvez Pruebas y Ensayos de España". #331 or 332 would be your proof, depending on if you classify it as Rose carmine & Black, or just Carmine & Black. These inexpensive proofs are very handy to have, as they clearly show the identifying marks necessary to help discern between the genuine stamps and forgeries.

Good point! I hadn't thought about using inexpensive proofs to assist in IDing forgeries of non-US stamps.

Which is also a good reason not to discard the ones with the telegraph punches, as well as the 3-line bar cancels. Same thing. I keep as many of these as I can get ahold of, for reference purposes. If you need help with the identifying marks for the earlies, I would be more than happy to help if I can.

Thank you, spain__1850! Most of my early Spain is in storage because of my frustrations in IDing or confirming certain stamps as genuine. I will make a mental note, and will likely trouble you in the future when I pull my Spain out of storage.

Sorry to have taken this thread slightly off-topic.

I would be very interested in knowing the ID marks for genuine stamps in the 1850s and 1860s series. I have been pulling up examples all weekend and comparing the stamps. I even looked over your posts on here from a few years back on the 1851 6c issue. (https://goscf.com/t/32655)

I also found an EDIFIL 2009 catalog online for Spanish stamps. Of course it is written in Spanish. It does give me a little more info than I had. I have started building a few pages for Spain to get more familiar with the stamps. I almost bid on a #69 blue and pink stamp today but I was not sure of the ID marks for genuine, so I passed when the price started rising.

I did bid on and win a 12 page group of Spanish stamps to give me more to examine up close. Nothing spectacular in the lot but something to work with.

Here is the first page of that group.

What do you think about this one from that group?
It is perf 14. Pencil mark "199" on back.

From 1873. I'll have to look it up.

You had to pick one from that set first? Kidding! I'm just not that familiar with the perforated issues, as opposed to the earlier imperf ones. But I'll give it a try.

First of all, I will say that most of the 19th c. Spanish stamps have been forged in one form or another. Some of them with dozens of different forgeries. Many of the forgeries from this particular set (1873) were actually made from stolen cliches.

I am not aware of any postal forgeries of the 4P, only philatelic forgeries.

Like most of the early Spanish issues, the engraver incorporated some small, hidden details in the design, to help minimize forgeries.

For the 1873 issues, there are 2 such marks that are "generally" referred to as "secret marks"


#1 points to the area where the horizontal background lines meet the forehead. Actually, on genuine stamps these background lines fall just short of touching the forehead. Some stamps are printed a little heavier and may appear to be touching, which complicates things a bit more.
#2 points to the small triangular area between the palm of the hand and the branch. The smallest background line has a small break in it on the left hand side.

These can be used for all the values in the set. Unfortunately for your 4P, it appears that portions of the cancellation are covering these 2 key areas.

But, there are some other things I would consider "red flags".

A) The cancellation is not a known cancellation for this issue.
B) The color appears to be more orange than brown. but this could be just my perception on my monitor.
C) The 2 areas circled have me puzzled. the background lines look like they may have been hand drawn in, in the large oval. Also, the background lines in the small circle appear to be wavy. Is this a anomaly from the scan?


One thing to remember is that these high values are commonly found with a telegraph punch. It is also very common for forgers to try to "mend" the telegraph punch and hide it with something on the back. It is also tempting to try to make a patch for the telegraph hole and make an attempt to draw in the missing details.

Wow. That is great information. I see that the OP has some more of these that are telegraph punched.

Peter

You make a very interesting point. The lines are wavy as shown. The picture I posted was a photograph, not a scan. It is actually like that. I think you may be right that the stamp had a hole and was repaired. It is very difficult to tell but if you look real hard, you can almost make out a fuzzy circle.


:

Try a quick dip in watermark fluid. That might reveal more.