Populaption Of Silver Tax Stamp Rg56 Declines By One

The $60.00 series of 1940 Silver Tax stamp (RG56) is a very scarce item with the known population now being eight stamps. While seaching the Philatelic Foundations online data, I noticed that the copy from the Ainsworth sale back in April 2009 had been recently submitted to the PF and returned with a certificate (563141) noting a counterfeit -series of 1940 handstamp. This stamp was always suspisous to me because its serial number of 146853, was slightly outside the range of known valves of 147,001 to 147,040, was for a credit of the tax and was used very early in the calendar year.Thus, this fake was made by applying a fake handstamp to a otherwise good RG20.


So credit to the PF for exposing the counterfeit overprint and lets take a look at the remaining genuine.

Sorry to the person who paid 10000 plus 15% for the education.

Notice on the counterfeit that the handstamp letters are uneven. Also notice that the letters are sans-serif. ALL Series 1940 handstamps have even letters and numbers, regardless of value and regardless of the usage. ALL handstamps also have serif letters.

That same stamp has a good APEX certificate dated July 18, 2019 (APEX #230040) https://classic.stamps.org/Certificate-Archive
I believe the PFC on this one.

I would like to know who signed on the APEX cert.

As a casual onlooker, not aufait with revenues,
I find this extraordinary.
So a collector paid $10,000+ for a stamp, due to the "series 1940" overprint?
Is that right?
If so, surely, he, and the expertisers, would bear strong focus on the Opt, style / ink / font etc.

That is very sobering.

Yes, the overprint is where all the money is. One would think that collectors would pay attention to the details, but as we have seen many times, that is not always the case.

Who signed the certificate is immaterial. What you are really asking is who expertised the stamp. Almost all APEX certificates I've seen have been signed by an APS officer or department head who had no knowledge of the specifics of stamp in question but wss acting for the expertising committee.

When I say "who signed" that means who signed the worksheet to expertise the item. That is what signing on an item means.

I am terrible at spotting issues with stamps but even my first thought was where are the serifs?

The handstamp could conceivably have been done in several Internal Revenue offices and so a different font is possible. However, subsequent records of other serial numbers showed that this was almost certainly used before the "Series 1940" came into use. Yes, it had passed through several prominent dealers hands previously and was thought to be genuine. But when new information comes to light, opinions change. Expertizing services do just that - render opinions based on the best available data at the time of the examination.

Sorry Ron, but even though the handstamp was applied at the local offices, it is obvious from examining all the known handstamp examples that the handstamp itself was manufactured in ONE location and then shipped to the various offices. While it is true that there are some different large style handstamps, there are NO known examples of any different of these small size handstamps. They all conform to each other as exactly as a handstamp can. Size, font, and spacing are identical.

Here is a screenshot of the APEX cert

I looked at it earlier. Unfortunately it does not tell me what I wish to know. Not that I expected it to.

Hi Bart - was just trying to save people from having to follow the link - wasn't responding to your question

The more info the better.

Quite a few threads in the last week regarding incorrect certificates.