France Too New York , A Doubtful Cover ?

Below a pic of a cover on e bay.My intention is not to critize the
seller because I don't know the person's intention's.Nevertheless
the stamps on the cover don't look right.If you look around the stamps
it seems the original stamps were cut out.Different stamps were placed
in to fit in as best as possible with the existing lozenge cancel on
the envelope.These look like 2 different cancelled stamps joined
together .The dots ,especially between the stamps don't match up,and
the dot's along the spliced insertion don't match up also.
Also the first lozenge is more squarish. ___What do you think?





A normal looking lozenge:

Yes. Agree.
Exactly as you described.


Now, not so sure.
We appear to have here, a cancellation surface of 4 thicknesses.

The envelope
The pasted fragment
The 40c Orange
Then the 10c bistre.

It is quite possible the cancellation hammer leaves ink on the higher surface, missing or partly missing the one below it.

It is conceivable this may just in fact be genuine.

See what others have to say.

I'd vote genuine, the only troubling item for me, one has to presume both cancellations are from the same hammer, but the bistre has a black dot inside the "D" other than that I see that as genuine.

What is the boxed "PP" ?
Is 50c the correct postage rate for that period?

The rate is OK depending on the weight.PP is "port payé". Some close ups
below;


The bistre stamp is over the orange stamp.In row 3 this dot bothers me.
Below alligenment through the dots:

It does not look good to me, especially after your excellent artwork, Perf 12.

This link for postage rates. The rates on the cover are correct(C).The supplement of 21 cents in the US cancel for delivery too final destination.Letter went through Calais.
http://jean-louis.bourgouin.pagespe...ats-Unis.htm

I think this one would require in-person examination.
I'd be very interested in the paste-up, or whatever that is, and what the scope of it is. I'd want to hold the cover up to the light and see it through from the back, under the stamps.

I agree that there is at least some reason to believe, at minimum, that the 40c was added or replaced. Maybe a poorer copy was originally there and an attempt to enhance the cover was made.

Then again, there could be a perfectly valid explanation for all of this -- but we'd probably need the cover in front of us to decide.

I've seen stamps affixed to a strip of paper, and then the paper glued on to an envelope and postally used, a number of times (not including Wells Fargo stuff). No obvious reason, but by all observation - genuine (as far as I could tell).

Looks bad to me.

A re-use/cut from another cover is not a problem, but the right cancel doesn't match up at all. The left cancel manages to tie all to the cover below, but the 40c isn't even tied to the first layer of paper.

This is something where a black light might help -- the oily lozenge "stutter" at the top of the 40c is what I'd want to compare. It could be genuine, but might be something added to "sell" the tie of the two stamps.

The piece the two stamps came from looks scissor-cut. Then someone carefully cut underneath the bottom edge of the 40c for what reason exactly?

I went back and copied the fuller cancel on the 10c, then colored it in green. Then I overlaid it on the cancel to the right but used the portion on the 10c for alignment. The green is slightly shifted upward, actually. It's a very good match, hard for a faker to do or bother to do. The cancels are thus identical to me. The partial strike/stutter throws off the eye. So back to square one, not proven either way for me.

What appear to be spots of dirt and a line in this image are the 10c stamp design remnants that I didn't clean up.

Nice work HB.

Notice also the New York Cancel, the top rim is indented, suggesting the cover was folded in half at some time in transit.

"port payé" = Carriage Paid

Interesting posts from everyone.I think analysing this cover from the screen is about as far as we can go now.So I decided too cheat; and sent a message too the seller asking him too clarify these strange lines around the stamps and the doubts about the cancels.He found something
shaddy going on also & rectified his listing as follows:

1857 envelope enclosed letter.
On close examination it appears that the stamps were affixed elsewhere (letter but not cancelled?). These were then cut out and pasted onto this letter.
I combine postage

________(txstamp mentioned this possibility)_______

http://www.ebay.fr/itm/1857-cover-t...p2060353.m14

Yes, if the stamps were uncancelled on their original cover, cutting them out is a way of re-using them.

That is definitely a possibility here.

I would not bid on such a cover as it does not look right to me.