An Easy To Spot Fake

Came across a group of boat stamps for a route that carried mail between St. Thomas, Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands) and Puerto Rico. Not only were these 1869 stamps issued after the service stopped its operation, but forgers in Germany badly reproduced them.

As you can see, this forgery of a fake stamp is clearly marked unreal.




I found the story of these stamps, featuring the ship Clara Rothe, quite interesting.

Here is a link if you would like to know more.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=st+thomas...=ffab&ia=web

Thank you for sharing. I will save this thread.

Dan

There's some other interesting locals from that part of the world. The St. Lucia Steam Conveyance Company stamps, the famous Lady McLeod issue and the St. Thomas - La Guaira locals.

Technically, it's not a fake, it's a forgery.
A fake is made from a real base material. A forgery or counterfeit (depending upon scope and intent) is made from the ground up.
This was made from the ground up with the intent to NOT fool anyone, making it a forgery.

The website linked above is very helpful, it is one of my go to spots when I have questions, which is frequently.

However, reading the description, and presuming it to be complete and accurate, the service did indeed terminate before the stamps were issued, yet the stamps would have been 'valid had it not. Would not the stamps have been 'valid' had they been used in their intended role? Obviously all the copycat stuff is what it is, but is there an 'original issue' somewhere here that deserves something better than 'bogus' or 'forgery'?

disclaimer, I don't have any!!

Thanks for sharing!

Classic, I described it as a forgery of a fake. It can't be a forgery of a forgery, can it?

Boxcar, that would move them from 'way back of the book' into the 'Cinderella' class, wouldn't it?

It is a forgery which can be made for collectors or to defraud the PO
As noted a FAKE is an alteration of an existing stamp - cutting or adding perfs, applying a fake postmark to increase value, creating a cover with a genuine or forgery, etc.

As for the question by modern_who

Forgeries of Forgeries are plentiful
The original may have been difficult to obtain so some forgers simply used existing forgeries or some bad catalog image to copy
The main exception was Sperati who duplicated the original including the plate position traits thereby making them very authentic

My site explains this issue in more detail
https://stampforgeries.ca/north-ame.../clara-roth/

Forgeries of forgeries; fakes of forgeries; sounds like a classic "6 of one, half dozen of another" situation. nl1947: I may have bookmarked your forgeries site before; not sure, but have done so again. Thanks for your efforts.

To have some fun, one with access to a Scott or Gibbons catalog could check out the 1877-1881 Crown issues of Portuguese India. Scott duly notes that these issues have been reprinted. What Scott doesn't say; in the 2016 Classic Specialized catalogue, my most recent; is that these issues have been forged (as an aside, the Crown issues of all Portuguese colonies have forgeries). Scott then says: "For surcharges, see Nos. 113-161." Scott doesn't say that these surcharges also have been extensively forged.

I have a bunch of these surcharged issues and obtained certs from the International Society for Portuguese Philately (ISPP) for higher priced copies. I didn't bother about the surcharges for many of the issues as I already determined that the underlying stamps were Fournier forgeries. So, likely faked surcharges on forged stamps.