Help To Identify This 12c 1861 Issue On Semi-Transparent Paper With Gum

At first glance, the upper corners look abraded/roughed up to me, suggesting somebody removed parts of the design.

With what looks like very bright white paper and the extremely sharp impression, I'm thinking this is an altered India proof. Do you know what that paper looks like? That major gum soak also suggests paper without sizing thar readily absorbs gum, again what India paper does when somebody tries to forge mint stamps with them.

Then the perfs should be checked, ideally against another stamp from the same issue.

Hy - That thought crossed my mind initially but given the fragile nature of India paper I ruled it out for myself. It would be so hard to work with and what would be the point given that the very thin paper stamps are grilled and this is not.

I would love to see what the PF concludes. It is intriguing.

As said earlier, it would be better to see something like this in person.

rogdcam, there's a way to work with very thin papers that I won't detail because The Cartel and his ilk don't need new ideas.

I recall a US #1 pair that I was shown to me by a European dealer, who thought it was real but didn't know US stamps. There was something like 1/4" between stamps and 1/2" all around. There's no such thing, of course. And they weren't even lined up, but staggered. What it was was two faulty genuine #1s with backs thinned down to near nothing and glued to a convincing blued paper. The designs were intact; no painting was done. You could just see the shadow of the original edges of the two stamps in Ronsonol. I still wonder what happened to this "piece".

Stampdorkman, how do those perfs look when compared against (say) a #65?

If it's a forgery, which I still strongly suspect, why couldn't have someone been trying to forge a mint #69? Occam's/Ockham's Razor and all that. Not everyone knows or cares about papers for these issues.

As usual, if you decide to send it in, please give us a report back with the results.