Hejaz, Nedj And Saudi Arabian Forgeries

About 45 years ago, while teaching in Saudi, a group of serious serious collectors, myself included, were working on a series of notes to aid in the identification of Saudi Arabian forgeries. The outcome was a book written by John (Jack) M Wilson that I Published and made available to the philatelic community. I decided to post some material that might be useful to our SCF community. The first will be on the 1925 Second Jeddah Provisional Issue. We will begin with the Genuine Overprint. Hopefully you can take this image and go through your stamps and fine some answers to these interesting overprints!

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Here is Forgery Type 1: Please follow the arrows and adjacent numbers. Interesting notation about signed "ELA"... This is generally a great sign for overprints from Hejaz. He was a Stamp Dealer in Cairo and normally means the stamp is GENUINE...this is an exception someone forged his back stamp, Rarely seen occurrence.

I hope you're finding this topic of use to the understanding of Hejaz forgeries. One quick note about the next two postings are they they are one-of-a-kind, known to exist. If you ever discover additional examples of type 2 or 3. Please let me know for my records.

Type III… Another example of a rare forgery! Please inform me if you find another.

Thank you for the GREAT posting and example of Forgery type 1. Hopefully the forum will find many great examples. It's fun to be able to find answers to these overprints. Once I have completed the 2nd Provisional overprint , I will move next to the 1st provisional overprint.

Forgery Type 4...The most significant point of reference here is the large comma like character solidly joined to the kaaf. Compare this to the genuine! Only one seen but can be difficult to ID.

Forgery Type 5...Only one seen! Give away here is the date... poorly formed Arabic date 1343 in lower line at left.

Forgery Type 6... Key feature is the top line is 16mm long whereas, on the Genuine the top line is 14mm long...

Forgery Type7... Key feature is the badly misshapen Arabic numeral 4 ...
See Bottom Left Arrow

Forgery Type 8... Key features are badly shaped Arabic 4 in Bottom Line Left and misshapen "wow" in Bottom Line Right...