Reperfed Stamps That Scare Me

I've been contemplating starting to fill some of the more expensive holes in my US album. Trouble is I'm easily scared off when I consider how good some of the repairs/alterations that can be made. Reperforated stamps top the list of my fears. It seems that the only way to protect oneself is to get a stamp with a cert or buy and send it off for one. I'm OK with that for stamps in the hundreds of dollars range but what about those less than $100?

Attached is a case in point - it's a nice 292 from a recent auction that is described as reperf'd at right. I really have a hard time identifying that - what am I missing or would it be something you'd have to have in front of you to catch. Any good eyes out there to clue me in on something obvious?

I did the side by side comparison. Maybe the right looks too good - holes look like perfect circles and not slightly elongated. Look forward to comments.

I feel your pain. Even with good scanning I cannot pick up good reperf job. Is that 1$ trans stamp reperfed at right? I don't see it.

Considering that reperfing/ adding perfs at right where there would be natural straight edge and guide line? Huge margins on side of stamps. You would think if had natural straight edge on right then evidence guide line would be visible.
Perhaps we should ask what the definition of "reperf" is? If you add perfs to a stamp where perfs didn't exist, then isn't it "added perfs" (most common?), if perfs improved or embellished or worked on called "improved perfs"... that leads to what the heck is "reperf". Is it removing old perfs and adding new ones?

To me another telltale is that there is virtually no variation in the shape and height (or length) of the perf tips on the reperfed side. They, too, look too perfect and I often suspect the fakers have used a scalpel or sharp knife to cut the line of perf tips. Genuine perforations, when separated by hand, almost always show variation in overall shape and in the angle and softness or sharpness of the separated edge.

FYI - This was from a 3/2018 Kelleher Auction (#711) and sold for $600. Nice looking stamp. I appreciate an auctioneer that would be up front with the alteration in the description. I've studied quite a few reperf pics on this forum and some are obvious and some are so perfect that I assume only an expertization service would catch it (wonder if same item sent to APEX, PF, PSE would even disagree sometimes). After looking and learning from this site, I unfortunately find stamps I've bought years ago are "weeds" and likely overpaid.

The righthand perfs are too clean and too similar. If you look at the other three sides, they all have a similar look to each other but the right perfs look significantly different.

Angore, the right side perf holes are smaller diameter than the left. Following revcollector and cjpalermo1964, the insides of the right perf holes are also very sharply cut, quite different from the other sides. The measure between perf holes wanders quite a bit; if just one or two were slightly mismatched, it would probably be considered okay.

When buying these better-but-under-$100 stamps, for perfs, you can take along a specialist gauge; hole size and gauge should be an exact match but you'll have to know which gauge goes with which issue. Otherwise you can accumulate the cheapest and faulty used value from the various sets, ones that are reasonably fresh-looking/not beat up for the issues you're interested in. Carry them around in a pocket stockbook or somesuch. Direct side-by-side comparison is then possible with a stamp that 99.9% of the time would not be reperfed itself. Since you have junky cheap stamps, I think you would have zero problems with someone thinking you stole your comparison stamps from them. Of course, you could always write "MINE" in ink on your comparison stamps.

I also think that after a while doing this, you will learn what to look for. And I also think you will find a lot of good-looking but altered stamps out there, more than you ever expected.

Here is a stamp that has questionable perfs.
I think I would call this stamp a #7 plate 2 with perfs added.
What do you guys think?



Any opinions on the perfs on this stamps?
It sure looks odd to see blind perfs (at left) that were cut with scissors and still pulled below the cut line.

Canyoneer, I feel your pain. I would not have been able to call that stamp "reperfed". It looks pretty good to me.

Jaxom, I agree the blind perfs (or no perfs?) on the left looks weird, but I don't see anything wrong with the perfs that actually do exist. And unless someone was practicing their reperfing skills on a #7, it is very odd they would put "slight" perfs on the lower right and then scissor cut the rest. I personally would call this a Type II #20.

My first reaction is that this is a #20 that was scissor-cut vertically on both sides, skewed quite a bit to the left on each.

You are definitely correct to be wary of imperforate stamps that get perforated, since the perf stamps sometimes have a higher catalog value.

* For Plates 1L and 2, typically, the stamps are worth more perforated.
* Perforated 1L stamps tend to be worth more than perforated plate 2 stamps, on average, by quite a bit.
* For Plate 4, typically, the stamps are worth more imperforate.

From the above list, one can easily infer that perforating Plate 1L stamps is the most attractive general thing to do for a faker. To the reader: this is perforating #9's to make #23's.

Perforating Plate 4 stamps, I don't think is done very often, since its almost always a lose for the faker.

Perforating Plate 2 stamps can be a win for some of the rare varieties - 99R2, cracks, etc - but on average, it has never struck me as being a huge win for the faker - but its a small bump, and no doubt occasionally happens.

The above is actually good news, since the most generally attractive thing to do is perforate Plate 1L stamps. Since Plate 1L was in use for so long, the impressions, color and everything else changed a lot over time. As a result, the fakers often perforate earlier impressions that are easily sorted out based upon that criteria alone. That's harder to do with Plate 2. There are definitely quite a few perforated #9's out there from Plate 1L that were not perforated by the government. That's the main one to beware of for the 1c ones.

I think the #20 shown above is genuinely perforated. It is very common to encounter the early perforated stamps that are scissor-separated.

Thank you guys for your input. My first thought was a #20 but I noticed that the high bidder retracted their $10 bid and it dropped back to $7. It made me suspicious. So I figured that if the general consensus was it was a #7 perfed, then I would cut the perfs off and put it back to original. The #20 is a better item even if scissor cut (I think). I bought it at $14. I figured there were so low bids because no one was real sure.