Germany Zeppelin 1Rm On Cover - A Complete Forgery

Any idea what from all of these on the cover can be genuine - if anything?

The stamps itself has a very unusual colour, looks like discoloration, but most probably a fake.

Herman Sieger's stationery envelope with his vignette? Also his personal cinderella on the back? A R-label?

To many efforts for making all of these details, and to add so bad fake of the stamp? Or fake stamp has been in better colour original, but poor quality, so it faded??

Can you post a better scan of just the stamp?

The remainder of the markings make sense. The letter was posted in Lorch, the was flown from Stuttgart to Nürnberg (an airmail route that began in 1926), then delivered to Coburg. It carries an airport cancel and two airport cachets from Nürnberg. This was also right after the issue of that stamp.

Thank you, PostmasterGS.

Here is a better scan of the stamp only...

Aside from the odd color, the contrast between land and sea is very weak. That is typical of one of the known forgeries/nachdrucken. So you might put some watermark fluid on the stamp to see if does read NACHDRUCKE on the back.

Realize this is not a Zeppelin flight cover, but is supposed to be an airmail cover. Is there some cancelled flight that never flew? As an airmail cover, it is way overpaid to start with. The Sieger handstamps on the back are dated 26 June and there are 2 different transit marks dated the 27th. The stamp is cancelled on the 31st; very odd for a German registered item to be misdated, if that's what that is about. The Coburg receiver is dated the 31st and just approximately 2 hours after the Lorch cancel(!). So where was this airmail cover knocking around between the 27th and 31st?

The Lorch wavy roller cancel doesn't look right either. But if the stamp is a forgery, then so probably is the cancel. I thought for this type, there was only a slight gap in the wavy lines as is at the bottom of the stamp, and no second large gap at the top above the stamp. And this is a very large device if it is a roller; most wavy line German roller cancels would have repeated at least part of the CDS in the length covered here.

I still don't see anything that screams "forgery." The perfs on the stamp appear to be correct, which is the #1 flaw with most forgeries of this issue. The true test would be to see if it has a watermark, which would settle this once and for all.

All the cancels have dates and times that make sense:

Mailed at Lorch, 26 May, 5-7 p.m.
Transited Stuttgart, 27 May, 8-9 a.m.
Transited Nürnberg airport, 27 May, 2-3 p.m., accompanied by two Nürnberg airport cachets.
Arrived Coburg, 27 May, 7-8 p.m.

The Lorch roller cancel is a hand-rolled cancel, and is consistent with the type in use at the time. The postage is an overpayment, but that's not uncommon with airmail flights of the period due to collectors wanting to use the newly issued zeppelin stamp.

The close up pic of the stamp indicates that it is indeed a photogravure printing. It has the characteristic cels with the correct angles of separation, and it has the sawtooth edges of the borders of printing. It appears to be very bleached out, as does the violet postal marking which touches it. I believe the stamp is genuine.

I am not an expertizer, so I cannot say anything about the overall cover and cancels.

If this is fake, the weakly-struck airport cachets on the front are a brilliant stroke (both because they faked them, and because they applied them so weakly.)

The worst danger here is that a fake stamp has been substituted onto a genuine cover, I think. Check the stamp for the watermark. If the stamp's genuine, the entire cover is probably genuine.

With the upper weak airmail boxed marking, it could be a stain was bleached out of the (genuine) stamp, with the marking also bleached. The lower one I can't read; maybe one of you know this:

perhaps "... Post/Restant ..."?
So does anyone have a catalog to tell if a /which first flight was involved? It would then probaby be flown Stuttgart to Nuremberg if we ignore the the Lorch postmark date.

These are likely the Nürnberg cachets:


Stuttgart to Nürnberg was a regular airmail route, and this was not the first flight, so I don't have the exact schedule. There's also no need to ignore the Lorch postmark date, as it's consistent with the remainder of the markings.

Thank you all so much for all replies and opinions!

Is it possible that Hermann Sieger bleached the stamp on purpose, just to try out the quality of them, and then he used it on the mailing? Or that he got a stock of bleached/wasted unused stamps from his supplier?

Is there any reference does he used his cinderella / poster stamp / seal on the back also for some other purpose (60 pf? value) than to seal his envelopes?

I believe someone had this cover exposed to sunlight or other UV light for an extended period. It may have been in a picture frame, or it may have been in a stamp store window.

I will never forget visiting a stamp store in Atlanta many years ago. The proprietor had stock pages on display in the storefront window. You can imagine what this did to the stamps....especially the red and orange ones.