Mystery Of The Commercial Philatelists In Springfield Mass

(I think this is the correct forum for this)

My local stamp club newsletter offered up the attached "Philatelic Mystery" and I thought of no better place of share it than the great SCF.
As the newsletter asks:
- Who were the Commercial Philatelists in Springfield Mass?
- Were they selling this set of stamps? (Did they know they were possibly forgeries?)
- Other musings?

This kind of salesmenship has been going on for the past 150 years . There is nothing about this that is unusual .

When I was 8 to 14 years old I bought all kinds of stuff that the approval dealers were selling all rare and exotic stuff for my collection which I read their write ups about how valuable this kind of material was ------It was all a lie ---but it sold to beginners ---

The stamps are, of course, forgeries. And it certainly looks to be a sales sheet here. The top of the sheet looks to have been cut off.

As a guess only, a "person of interest" would be Tatham Stamp & Coin Co. (aka TASCO) in Springfield, MA. They often sold things with printed write-ups so then probably had a print shop connected with the hobby business. The Confederate forgeries in the TASCO booklets and the booklet series were their creations.

I am surprised then that Suez Canal forgeries don't show up often in US collections. It may be since the stamps weren't in Scott, they weren't bought very often.

People who collected worldwide bought them. People who only collected US usually did not.

I run across the Suez Canal forgeries rather frequently in old collections that I process. Undoubtably TASCO.

revcollector, of course collectors of US stamps would be uninterested. I refer to collections that were assembled by collectors based in the US, like in Scott Browns or Big Blues; rogdcam apparently says different. Plenty of various Suez Canal Co. fakes and other forgeries in old collections assembled outside of the US.

The text of the sales sheet indicates the stamps are "duplicated here" so the company clearly implies these are dupes and not originals. I agree that this is probably a TASCO promotion.

(The top is cut off because, as the poster says, this was a presentation for the stamp club.)

Proof shown below.

Jim

Thank you James! That's exactly what I wanted to see. I knew the SCF would come through.
Much thanks !

I grew up in Springfield when there were numerous stamp stores. It was a thrill to walk downtown and look in the windows and see all of the neat things for sale and display. Tatham was gone about the time that I was getting started but everyone knew about them. Howard MacIntosh, the owner committed suicide if I am not mistaken. There were many facsimiles of both stamps and coins. A fascinating part of philatelic history. The only one left of any note is Suburban Stamp owned by Larry Bussilo.