Franco Bollo They Look Important But I Have No Idea About Stamps. There Are 6 Of Them.

Franco Bollo Can somebody help me. Thanks

Welcome to Stamp Community Forum, Chechilita

Check out this earlier discussion: https://goscf.com/t/4760

Thanks. So hopellesly fake?

They are genuine Papal States (aka Vatican City, Roman States) stamps. Unfortunately, deplorable condition and essentially without cash value as a result.

Well "deplorable", I don't know. They are in poor condition, heavily trimmed in cases, but not shockingly so. Some collectors might rather have a space filler than nothing.

Well, my thought was that these are a good deal less deplorable than many of my treasures!

Well, thanks for those 3 last replies. I was going to put them in the shredder. Maybe I should have taken them out of that holder where 3 decades of dust have accumulated and they could have looked better. Thanks for all answers anyway.
Cecilia

Don't shred them. All collectors are different in their requirements and sometimes people forget that.

First of all, they are not from Vatican city but from Pontifical State or if you want Romans States, it was way more than just Vatican city with 16,000 square miles of central Italy and 3,000,000 persons. The Pope was not even living in the actual Vatican city before they lost the war in 1870 or may be few years before, I will have to check . They was no Vatican City State before February 1929

Second you quick on the trigger to say they are genuine, they are so many counterfeits or reprints of them and I see few questionable in the lot.

You greatly exaggerate what you read in the Scott catalogue about the value, they are selling at a few % of the CV, but the CV is high so it stay with a value.

area66 - Richard Frajola knows more about these stamps than you could ever imagine. I would take his word at face value.

Well I do have a problem when someone use the word "aka Vatican City" for describe a huge part of what will became Italy , In fact 59 years separate the end of the Pontifical States ( Romans or Papal States) and the beginning of the Vatican City States. The name Vatican City was first use in 1929 in the Lateran Treaty.


And they are a reason why those stamps sell well below CV, because peoples don't want collect them because they have difficulty to make the difference betwen an original one and a counterfeit or a reprint. So for me someone who say they are genuine from an image on a forum , just take a guess. If ever stamps need a certificate, it's those stamps

I would take Richard Frajola's opinion on these, even from an image, to the bank. Given their condition, a hobbyist would be unwise to spend money on a cert. So having Richard post his opinion is incredibly valuable.
Don

(I am only posting this to thank Jenny2 for her nice comment. For her, even if nobody else cares, it is worth explaining my initial response)

Chechilita - I am sure that several of the posters on this thread mean to give you encouragement when you are asking about your stamps, and that is a good thing. I think honesty is also a good thing and there is more to philately than can be easily absorbed from the internet.

First, I call the issuing entity "Papal States" but also listed "Vatican City" as an AKA (Also Known As) because many collectors of Vatican City collect Papal States as a forerunner and many of the pre WWII albums in Italian and Spanish also have the stamps shown along with Vatican City stamps as many Catholics collect Papal States.

With that out of the way, it is very easy to distinguish most all of the used Papal States stamps. A knowledge of genuine cancels used makes it easy to spot, for example, the genuine postmark of Rome on your half bajocci stamp as well as the Bologna cancel on another. The grill cancel on the 1 bajocchi is NOT the grill style found on the Fournier forgeries so it to must be genuine. Also, the dotted cancel on 10c is correct for that issue.

The Papal States does have reprints that can be confused with unused stamps. Bottom line here is that genuine in this condition are not worth anything anyhow and the forgeries would be worth just as much as the real in this condition. The dangerous forgeries, such as Sperati are only the high values (see my web presentation on Sperati forgeries to see examples).

My "home town" collection (my father's parents emigrated from Umbria) includes the cover here which shows late use of Papal States grill cancel from Umbria after Sardinian control of the region.:

http://www.philamercury.com/covers.php?id=12288

Thank you 51Studebaker as well!