Fakes And Forgeries -New Method

One of the problem with collecting and displaying fakes is you need a real stamp to compare it too . That's not a problem on cheap stamps but with some they get expensive . Here is something I am working on . Once I capture a scan of the real stamp ,then blow it up and mount that to my page . Looks interesting and hope to improve some of my reference pages .

I thnk that is a good idea although you may have problems with 1) getting a high quality scan of the original but I guess you have that sorted and 2) the colour of your printout - if colour is important to id the forgery. You could also scan and enlarge your forgeries to show the differencies.

AQ

If it works for you, by all means go for it. For me, seems like a lot of extra work, especially since I've never scanned anything. I do have 16 unreviewed Cape triangles, but also have the APS' Serrane Guide which gives a good explanation of the forgeries.

Take me back to the good old days, back before all the fakes. I know they've been around for a long time, but they've definitely have taken a lot of the air out of the balloon.

While no doubt there are more and more fakes out there, our skill level in recognizing them has improved. Especially with the help of forum like this one. the level of expertise here is amazing.

I find ebay single items are often good enough size and quality to be useful. The valuable genuine ones need to show a cert or good signature before saving, I'd think. Think about storing images as GIFs or PNGs to help with long-term preservation. Copying all your JPGs to a new computer or hard drive degrades them enough to be noticeable; three generations of copies and the scans are getting muddy and darker. You've seen this happen with scans uploaded to the board here, even though the board seems to use the highest quality setting for uploads.

floortrader, note that Pbucket is charging its members for the privilege of uploading to sites like this -- $40/mo. or $400/yr. You can't even do "view image" to get the picture here.



You mean back before we as individuals knew there were so many fakes? I don't know if I would agree. They are unavoidable in any collecting field. Maybe it's because I collect fakes, too?

There was "this guy" (it's always "this guy", but the pros and learned folk here know who this was) who was truly an expert in regumming stamps and making LH into NH. He did work that fooled the expert groups. He hated NH collectors so it was like a mission for him to fool them. Not all of his work was perfect, but some of it was amazing.

So, what you don't know won't hurt you? But you probably do want to know. Then you come here, buy or get references and learn rather than just slap stuff on album pages. The latter is fun, but then one should stick to real modern stuff or cheap stamps to be safer.

A mission to fool unmounted mint obsessives? Who could resist? Didn't Elmyr de Hory take particular pleasure in fooling the art market and having his "masterpieces" hang in prestigious galleries across the world?

Yes; I've read about him and seen documentaries about de Hory. He was never really convicted of forgery while alive, though various people were after him. Even better, his stuff became collectible and other people forged de Hory works after his death (typical, that).

There's probably one in every collectible area possible.

Sorry I don't mean to hijack this conversation but... About photo quality degradation:

Copying a file from drive to drive will not degrade the digital image if your equipment is working properly (for many copy-generations). Each time you copy/move a file to a new location file fragmentation can occur. Normally this is not a problem and many files do get fragmented during the normal course of using your computer without your ever becoming aware. It's not a problem under normal circumstances. Keep in mind that modern operating systems defragment hard drives and will move and shuffle files or file fragments on your drive periodically as a part of normal maintenance.

Also keep in mind that most files get moved 3-4 times right off the bat, once when moving them off the camera, 2-3 times while the average person figures out where they want to keep them.

Best practice is to keep the original as is. Make a copy this file any time you need to generate a new one from it. Then rework the copied file, be it a rotation, resizing or other modification. Alternately you can store this master copy on an off-line hard drive and make a working copy to use as a master to make additional copies from. At that rate you're working on a two generation copy and should not be able to see any visual effects even at extreme close up.

This is not like an analog photo of a photo or scan of a scan. Those types of copies will degrade much faster and you'll see visual effects in only a few generations even with high quality equipment.

However, if you do a 90 degree rotation and save on a single digital file repeatedly, you'll lose definition progressively. By the time you've done about 2000 rotations there will be no distinguishable characteristics left. I say "about" due to a wide variety of variables that may come into play. This is due to a modifying act as apposed to making a copy.

Try not to make generational copies (Copy of a copy of a copy) if at all possible although for digital copies, it's should take a lot more than 3-4 generations to see any visual evidence of it if your equipment is working correctly.

Just another note... manufactures claim storage on current CD or DVD media has a life span of 100 to 200 years. But older CDs (1980's-1990's)have a lower average shelf life at 20-30 years.

I've spent 32 years in the industry. I cut my teeth in mainframe networking. 14 years as a global network engineer and the rest in information assurance/cyber security. I do get involved in computer forensics from time to time.

To test this: The first snapshot below was taken at the National Postal Museum this past Wednesday, I walked over on my lunch break. Not a high quality photo to start with, my current phone takes lousy photos... I reduced it in size for this board then made a copy of a copy, then made a copy of that copy and so on for 50 generations. These copies were bounced back and forth between my laptop and desktop computers via a local area network then consolidated into one directory on my laptop.

The first photo is #1 and the second photo is #25, third is #50. The last is screen shot of all 50.









Although I am a Cyber Security Subject Matter Expert, I do not consider myself to be a forensics or photographic analysis expert. I just have some good working knowledge. So take this for what's it's worth... just my two cents.

I've seen this done with more highly detailed photographs but don't have any with sufficient detail at my disposal here and my lunch break (yes, I usually eat at my desk while surfing) is almost over. Maybe I'll replicate this with a high quality photo of a stamp taken with a digital microscope and report back in a few days.


Jeff

Hi Jeff,
Images, scanning, and image processing has previously been discussed; here is one where I did similar testing as you outline.

https://goscf.com/t/50620&whichpage=3

Here is another one which might be of interest to you
https://goscf.com/t/51364

Don

Thanks Don I'll take a look at it tonight.

A newer site on forgeries that ACTUALLY provides information instead of just random pictures.
New material added periodically but obviously time consuming.

http://stampworld.ca/Website/

Someone wrote "Take me back before all the fakes". You must mean back in the stampless days, because fakes began almost immediately. They often weren't created to defraud or deceive in those early days, but they were certainly being created.