Interesting Scott # R240 Color Changeling

Lovely steel blue shade I've not seen before, presumably due to environmental conditions or chemical alteration.

The stamp at right is R240 "yellow green", the stamp at left is R240a "green", and the stamp in the middle is the changeling.

The early printings were in green. At some point the color changed to yellow green. There are philatelic forgeries of RG13 on green, easily distinguishable because of the color of the underlying stamp. Alas, Scott Specialized lists the color of RG13 as green and it should be yellow green. I will try later to get a scan of the philatelic forgery and the genuine to post.

Just to make sure I understand your terminology: "philatelic forgery"... as opposed to a contemporary counterfeit created to circumvent the legal authorities, e.g., the Hart L. Pierce R3c? If so, why would anyone create a philatelic forgery of RG13? It's of nominal value.

If, on the other hand, you mean counterfeit, please submit it to Jay Bigalke so it can be included in the recently added section on revenue counterfeits.

Dan,

These are philatelic forgeries of quite a few denominations of the first silver tax stamps, meant to deceive stamp collectors. Recall that until the 1960's many of the documents that had the stamps on them were in files that had not come to the philatelic marketplace. The motivation for producing these was similar to the motivation that produced the philatelic forgeries of RJA 33 - 41.

In the case of the philatelic forgeries of the narcotic provisionals, the forger (possibly a stamp dealer) was so enthusiastic that he or she used the forgery overprint on the 50¢ denomination, a denomination that was not produced by BEP! And to add to the appeal to stamp collectors added inverted overprints on the 3¢ denomination.

Yet another forger of the set of provisional narcotics produced their overprints on the 40¢ denomination, and the $2, $3, and $5 denominations.

Hi Ron. Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense.