Quote:
There wouldn't be much reason to fake a stamp, except for postal use maybe.
On the contrary, the 1800's were probably the most prevalent period of forging and faking of all. Counterfeiting for postal use began with the very first stamp, and the first stamp forgeries to fool collectors began around 1860. In fact a book was published on how to detect forged stamps in 1863, that's how common they were. It was almost in plague proportions by the late 1800's.
Many famous names of forgers are from this period - Jeffryes, Sarpy, Benjamin, S.Allen Taylor of Boston, the Spiro brothers of Hamburg, Friedl and Fournier to name a few. Probably the most famous of all was Sperati, but he was a little later, early 20th century. All of these famous forgeries were to fool collectors. Even by the 1860's rare stamps were worth thousands of dollars (or pounds.)
As to your particular stamp I can't help as it's not an area that I collect, but I would tend to agree that it does look amateurish, the lettering as well. It certainly looks like an early Prussian but with the 2nd last letter being R instead of K.
Balf
Posted 11/09/2009 9:35 pm
. Well, everything that is not in Scott's 6 volume catalog is puzzling me 
anyway, but this feels like a good one. It looks a lot like Prussian King Frederick Stamp A1, A2 design, but it has a different kind of face and reads Freimarre instead of Freimarke. If anyone could help me id this stamp, would help me a lot.
could it be a some kind of working draft of the Prussia #9 stamp? Aaaa.. not likely, right? 
