Modern Fakes Flooding The Market - Revisited

In a very long post, a new poster just referenced this topic that was the subject of a long heated debate in

https://goscf.com/t/46376

Coincidentally?, there is a long article on the subject in the September 2018 APS journal pages 840-847. I can only guess the author of the article is the same that authored the original thread (as I am not going to slog all the way thru the original thread to see if their name was in there).

Perhaps I should have posted this in the APS folder where Scott E. would be more likely to see it, but I am wondering if the APS vetted the accuracy pf the contents of the article, given that the person who posted here did not appear to be an impartial observer?

I do know there is someone in the Midwest feeding the market with lots of the Leaders material, but I have no idea if it is archive material (including print to order "errors") or whether forgeries, as I avoid Leaders material like the plague (equally distasteful to me in either case).

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Yes, I remember the iriginal thread well. "Snake-oil salesman complains about prevalence of fake snake-oil", as it were.

It is interesting stuff. I read the first article and the persuing discussion. I also noted that many would not buy that "junk."

Ironic that I would view a small dealers weekly auction site this past weekend on the West coast of Canada in British Colombia and found a lot of it for sale. At least it is declared and sold as illegal and bogus, making up a display. What got me was the price realized for it. Almost 3 times estimate. Obviously there is still a market for that kind of stuff. Below are the description, lot pictures of the title pages and items and the price realized along with seller initial and number and buyers #. Barbuda and St Vincent were not mentioned directly in title pages but the stamps are in there.

Glad I cut my St. Vincent collection off at 1980. Mostly collect only used regular issues so I do hope not to find any bogus issues.

Mike

I'd still like to know if anyone one at the APS verified any of what they published or merely took this guy's word because he sounded to them like he knew what he was talking about and appeared to be trying to warn people about a problem. He could be telling the truth, but I have a healthy dose of skepticism given he financial interest in the subject.

The acid test to determine if an item is a valid postage stamp or just a commercial philately label is, "show me one accepted for payment of a valid postal rate used on a contemporary cover mailed in the country issuing the stamp."

Yep, even the S.... catalogue is full of postal labels that cannot pass this test.

And then there is the issue of "limited release" designed to hype the value of an item to a collector. Not all philatelic scams fly inverted.

So what your basically asking is if anybody did peer review? I'm neither APS nor experienced enough on St. Vincent, but I can say that shodan/JLowe has done some excellent research on topic of 'sand dunes' as well as 'Feigenbaum productions'. I see no reason he would have changed his 'standards'

And him doing sales is nothing unusual. Any collector specializing into something particular (and especially when doing NEW research) will need to acquire tons of comparison material, which eventually needs to be disposed one way or another.

-k-

"So what your basically asking is if anybody did peer review?" Yep.

"but I can say that shodan/JLowe has done some excellent research on topic of 'sand dunes' as well as 'Feigenbaum productions'. I see no reason he would have changed his 'standards' " Good to know.