Perf 12 Coils 1908-10 - Need Some Education

I have a few of these coil pairs in a collection I'm breaking down. Scott warns that there are plentiful fakes and I am trying to figure out how to tell. I saw this on ebay and since it is a line pair I was quite surprised that it was a fake. Can any of you tell me what makes this suspicious? The ebay item number is 142488584606. It includes the warning cert from the PF saying it is not a genuine coil.

http://www.philatelicfoundation.org...coil-stamps/
http://www.stampsmarter.com/learnin...keCoils.html

Two good links.

Pessimistic, but every US flat plate coil without a good certificate is suspicious - with good reason.

The edges look like they were cut with either scissors or a low end
desktop paper cutter, not a BEP slitting machine...

Thanks for the links. I will certainly be doing some measurement of the ones I have. One of the things that confuses me is the line between the stamps. If these were perforated or imperf stamps originally how did that line get there? Is that faked too?

I see the answer in the Stamp Smarter page - the fakes are made from imperf coils...

Looking at the ones I'm working on, the width are exactly right, the edges look ok to my untrained eye, but some of the perf holes seem a little too perfect.

I can see this is not easy.

Risny, if you want to see a bad edge look at the bottom right
edge. It looks like it has been cut by a dull knife.

Peter

Clearly I had better upload a scan. Here you go. One of them has a 2013 PSAG cert. The one with the arrow measures 22mm. The rest measure at the correct widths. Watermarks and perf gauges are all fine.

the "joint line" on the original stamp that started this thread is tilted to the left

@RLSNY, for a good resource of information, see if you can get or borrow a copy of Martin Armstrong's book that covers the W/F heads. Really good resource.

Stampmaster

Also, a search for fake coils, washington franklin coils, or perf 12 coils on this site will pull up previous discussions. Some basics you look for with coils (this is how my brain works, anyways) is:

PERFS: genuine or not?
EDGES: parallel or not? too smooth vs too rough (like the right lower edge in the opening stamp pair here) vs just right?
SIZE: There is ideal (25mm for horizontal coils; 21.5mm for vertical coils) and there is possible (slightly less than ideal widths)

Obviously, there are other details (e.g. design is correct for the Scott #, guideline is genuine, etc), but for me, most of my consideration falls in the above 3 categories. Flat plate coils for Wash Franks are a quagmire...but I personally enjoy them.

Eyeonwall, I think the guideline looks good, but the central row of perfs tails to the left, making the guideline look crooked.

The perforations are fake. As pointed out previously, the center perforation row is not parallel to the right or left side. Edges on hand assembled flat plate coils should be parallel to within 0.001 inch. Auto-wound coils would also have parallel edges with some exceptions, but the characteristics of the edges are different. Appearance and lack of specificity by the PF suggest that the pair could be a later imperf coil center line pair with single line watermarks. Spacing between the stamp designs at the center line would be 2 mm on earlier plates or about 2.5 mm on later plates. Consult a recent Durland plate number catalog for details. Coil height or width measurements are not absolute. Conforming measurements will not guarantee that a coil is genuine.

Thanks all for the suggestions. I will obviously have to spend more time on these.

Spending time learning to distinguish fake perfs from genuine perfs will help a lot, many (but not nearly all) fake coils are created from imperfs.

Quite true... I've seen jumbo 374's which could easily be used to fake 387... not the block block below, of course, but you get the point...

Hi, fake coils are also made from booklet stamps, trouble is watermark is wrong orientation there to.

Stampmaster