Castellorizo Stamps Or Forgeries

One of the Lots for bid tonight was this parcel page with these 5 stamps Which I got for 3 dollars. the seller had just bought a large lot from the East Coast and he was not sure if these were good stamps or forgeries so he put them in our Club's auction for only $3.00 and nobody else bid for them. Now I am asking people that know more than I do about these stamps.









Thank You for any Help with these.

Hi Leejb1
I have no experience with this area, however I am quite familiar with postmarks used in France. Postmarks can be a good indication if something fishy going on. It seems clear to me that all the 'sowers' and the 50c 'Merson' have been cancelled by characteristic postmarks from France - meaning they were probably first used postally in France - and then later applied a forged handstamp. (I can't say anything about the 1 franc). My appologies for the 'bad'news, but I guess you were prepared for that. There is also the possibility that these shapes were for some reason also used in Castellorizo, but unlikely....
You need a specialist to verify. I hope I am wrong and that yours are genuine

Postmark shapes



THe 25c sower has a postmark the shape of 'Cercle ondule'

the 5c, 20c and 40c have postmarks the shape of double rings with intermittent/broken inner ring, called 'Cercle plein et cercle avec tirets' http://marcophilie.org/x/x-for-i.html

btw - did yopu see this site? use google translate
https://semeuse25cbleu.net/tag/cast...territoires/ br /

The double ring Cancel was used also, but in Greek.These cancels don't look like the Greek types.The Castelloriso ovpt. was
always horizontal on the Merson stamps.

They don't look Greek because they aren't. (N)antes is in France (25c). The article that Blaamand refers to shows the cancels "usually" used in French-occupied Castellorizo. perf12 shows another type, but the piece looks fishy -- is it signed/certified?. There are none that resemble metropolitan France cancels.

All are fakes and found often enough.

I agree - so let's offer some reasoning as to what makes one think so.

This presentation show the 25c from the OP (with question marks) between two different expert certified copies at left and right.


The certified overprints/handstamps are both undefined/fuzzy and done with seemingly oily/patchy ink, letters in 'Castelloriso' are thin and fragile.
The 3 copies at the bottom are all fake/forged handstamps - all have both more defined letters, bolder letters and done with a better quality ink without the oily patches. It seems the stamp in question has similar characteristics as well.

There are also minute differences in the overprint itself - example given the distance between the bottom part of the 'C' and the left leg of the 'A'. The certified copies both show some space in between 'C' and 'A', the stamp in question from the original thread has those letters almost connected.

Another clue for eliminating obvious forgeries is to look at the original 'Sower' stamps. For the 25c, the genuine overprints were only done on this stamp in Type IA. Any overprint on other type of the Sower are forgeries. Here is how to identify the different types:



Below are zoomed crop outs from the 2 genuine and from the stamp in the OP (in middle), compared to the illustrations for type-identification.




It seems to me the top curl of the figure '2' corresponds to Type II for the stamp in question.
The end pearl is not eliptic vertically as for Type IA - it is more rounded or eliptic horizointal as for Type II - and the blue scroll has its end pointing slightly downwards and not upwards.

I think the community favors if we share viewpoints and experience by also backing those viewpoint up with illustrations and facts etc.

Some relevant resources:
https://semeuse25cbleu.net/usages-h...astellorizo/
https://semeuse25cbleu.net/2014/12/...rges-encore/
http://www.semeuse.com/140_recon_type.html

@leejb1 - I still think you did a fine purchase - I would have them in my collection as 'spacefillers' any day

Nice information and very detail to identify fakes .
LEEJB 1 -If you ever want to get rid of those fakes ,I would be interested in getting them for my forgery collection .

@floortrader - thanks.



he he, get in line - I'm here first.

So, French cancels on stamps issued for Castelloriso isn't enough?

More letter shape identification in the genuine is that "F" has a curved upright (convex left) and the "S"s in "CASTELLORISO" are different and quite distinctively shaped.

There is a further fake in this style reading "CASTELLORIZO".

The piece with the 3 different cancels (posted by perf12 and shown in the first page cited by Blamaand) is highly suspect. There was no need for all three postal systems to move a letter and they were each trying to occupy the little island, 12 sq km (4.6 sq miles) with a population of perhaps 4000 at this time. This is likely abuse (fake usage) of captured/seized Greek and Turkish cancels.

That site also shows a fake 25c Sower overprint, passing it off as genuine.

@hy-brasil,
I do not make sense of your posts, English is not my mothers tongue so forgive me for maybe misunderstanding what you are saying.

After my initial response in this thread you wrote 'There are none that resemble metropolitan France cancels'. I understood that statement like you did not agree with me when I had written that the stamps in the OP was cancelled in France. So I understood your first post in this thread like you contradicted both the 2 first replies and basically did not agree in anything.

I did not bother to discuss whether these postmarks were from France or not, so in my 2nd post I simply skipped the postmark-issue alltogether and focused on studying other characteristics. Then your reply was



Did you actually mean the opposite in your 1st thread - that you actually tried to say that you agreed with me - and that there were no cancels in use at Castelloriso that looked like the ones used in France ?

Cover addressed to a sailor on the Jeanne d'Arc.I would bet that he addressed the letter to himself when his ship layed at anchor in the
bay of Castellorizo.I think most off these covers especialy with the naval cancel were philatelic souvenirs.(Jeanne d'Arc in the port of Castellorizo on post-card:4 aout 1916).







http://castellorizo.proboards.com/t...castellorizo
Some different covers.:

Very nice covers perf12.

This tiny dot on earth has quite an interesting and complex postal history, caught in between the interests of Greece, Ottoman empire/Turkey, France, Italy and others!

There are some interesting places like this.For instance "Isle Rouad".
http://cps89.free.fr/PDF/70_e.pdf
http://asppi.org/etudes/Surcharge-I...-MESLIN_.pdf
Maybe someone can start a thread on this.I don't have anything from
that epoch.Interesting how history repeats itsself....

I want to thank all those that passed on information on these stamps. I will be placing them in my collection as forgeries just to fill space in the book. Until I can get true stamps.