I Would Like To Understand How It Is Possible!

I saw on ebay a listing for a Chinese red revenue stamp 1 dollar – small type (scott #83) which had a conclusion for 3050 USD after 29 bids !
http://www.ebay.com/itm/China-1897-...AOSwDrNZXaGS

It is well known that especially that stamp is SUPER rare and it is sold for only 3050 USD !!
Scott catalogue value: 725000 USD
Obviously, it is a forgery; but buying a forgery for 3050 USD and after 29 bids ???? either the seller is extremely stupid either it's the bidders.

I found an advertizing of the auction of that stamp on the scott catalogue 2013 – see hereunder.
I would like to have your opinions about that.
Thank you

As they say in parts of the UK, "there's nowt so queer as folk". Maybe there really are rampantly stupid people willing to pay this sort of money for something worth a couple of dollars? Maybe they are fake bids?

I don't know anything about this particular stamp or seller, but I don't doubt someone could be stupid enough to spend $3000 on a forgery. I've seen fairly bad forgeries of some valuable German States sell for hundreds of dollars on ebay, sold by large sellers I don't suspect of using shill bidders. There are plenty of people with more money than brains - lots of people with small fortunes started with large ones.

Well this seller has 6 negative evaluations in the last 6 months for fake stamps!.....at least he is not confidential.

The picture is not big enough or good enough quality to say anything definitive, to me at least.

Now the underlying stamp of a genuine, the Red Revenue, is engraved. Fakes would be lithographed. A fake Small Dollar would not be made from the unoverprinted/basic stamp, of which only a few are known. There are no known used copies (to remove cancels from), so it is suspected that the Red Revenue was never issued and probably destroyed at some point after printing the postal overprints. Go look in your Cinderella and junk boxes if you don't believe me.

How must this be a fake? It may or may not be one. The paper looks genuine, the print from what I can tell directly going to ebay, looks right. It would be a strange and fruitless effort to try to fake a corner margin copy and then stain or stick an adherence in the margin. The only problem is the gum on this issue, often pretty badly disturbed or heavily hinged, ranging to so little gum there it hardly matters to call it even part OG. $3000 would be a righteous bid for a no gum stamp here. It could actually be NH or no gum, I can't tell for sure, but it has the look of a regummed stamp from the front with some gum soaking apparently showing through. Therefore it's at a no gum price if no faults are hidden. The seller only says "mint VF".

Bad presentation in a pocket didn't help this. I can't magnify the image, either.

Low prices can always happen for a variety of reasons. If it is stolen, would the seller care what it brings?

If the seller's earlier failures were fakes of better stamps, I could understand but not sympathize. A lot of dealers and collectors don't know, especially when they've never examined a proven genuine one before. The fakes of that expensive 1980 Year of the Monkey stamp fool a lot of people including dealers and collectors who really should know better. If you know that the black is engraved/raised on the genuine, that's the key, where the fakes are all litho/not raised. Heck, there's even an ebay post about how to detect the fakes. Even Scott says "engraved and photogravure".

I find this stamp faker than fake..The first pic is from interasia auctios,the second the chinamans stamp.The difference is quiet obvious
I find.The characters don't match up and look at the box character it's narrow and weak compared to the real m'coy.Weak aspect everywhere.



https://www.justcollecting.com/misc...-for-890-000

perf12, you are correct. Also at minim, the upper rightmost character dah doesn't match, nor does the English typeface.

Perforations look wrong, wrong count. The point after "dollar" is too far right. I'm sure there are many other indications. A fake.

Some of the areas among many highlighted.....

THe stamp is a forgery also;not bad ;but I'm not fooled..(yet).

Wow- great images perf 12! CLearly these are different, making the ebay example a likely fake. Aside from the different font for "1 dollar," the boxed Chinese character above "1 dollar" has a missing element. In the genuine example, just above the first L in dollar there is a diagonal line connecting the bottom line of the box to the bottom of the central characters. In the likely fake, that line is missing.