Philatelic Foundation Looking For Experts

Just got an email from the PF:

"Experts Needed

#8202;Due to a growing number of submissions, The Philatelic Foundation is in need of experts to review patients submitted for authentication certificates. Work can be done at your home or in our New York office at 353 Lexington Avenue at 40th Street with access to our extensive reference collection. The renumeration is per item and is based on ability.

Experts Required for Consideration:

#65279;1. Extensive knowledge of identifying US stamps.
2. Knowledge identifying gum, regumming, reperforating and identifying other
faults and stamp manipulations.
3. Background security references a must.
4. Dependability to perform.
5. Able to perform on a usual 2-3-day turnaround time.
6. Some grading ability.
7. Postal History knowledge a plus.
8. Some knowledge of foreign stamps a plus.
9. An individual who knows what he knows and can admit what he doesn't
know. No one knows everything.

Are you a candidate for a position?

Do you know someone who would be a good candidate?

We would also like to know of candidates interested at some future date."

I wonder whether they are indeed receiving significantly more submissions, or whether the number of true experts in the philatelic community is diminishing, or both.

Speaks volumes to their intended expertise on foreign.

FYI-The PF has a significant foreign reference collection to go along with the US collection.

How is grading ability defined?

Grading ability is rated from average to superb.

(sorry, couldn't resist).

Perhaps they give the candidate a page of stamps to grade and see how close they come to what the other experts have graded the stamps at.

I always thought that grading (at least centering) was more technical/mathematical from a computer scan, with other qualitative ratings (freshness, cancellation, faults) being added or subtracted from the initial grade. Is all grading these days done by humans versus computer assisted?

For most countries, grading is hokum, and I assume that, for US collectors of foreign stamps, the real point of interest in certifying will lie in establishing genuineness or the lack of it. A test page mixing forged and genuine would be represent a difficult challenge without access to the reference collection and technical tools.

While this is frequently true, I suspect that it depends somewhat on the country involved. I think it likely that at least some forgeries are so well known that they become fairly obvious to someone knowledgeable. The brightness of the inks, or the paper being wrong, or some obvious flaw would give them away quickly.

"Without access to the reference collection "------ to have a nice reference collection it will cost you 30 or 40 years of you life plus between $100,000 to $200,000 to put together a decent worldwide collection of forgeries.

It is totally different than collecting stamps ,it invoules buying lots of reference works plus buying other peoples work ,then checking that they classified everything completely right .

Guess the best way to describe it ,is the same way the greatest stamp collectors of the 1800's did it ......that was to buy other peoples collections and build on what they had ,because starting from zero takes to long . Buy a few establish
forgery collections and studies then build off that .

Looking for the experts who are building their own reference library and source . All I found were experts in their 70 and 80's years of age .

Where are the researchers ,buyers and the people who build their own references and not those who excel at finding stuff someone else posted on the internet . You want to be a expert then put in the time and money because it takes both ,yea lots of time and money .

Back to grading, whatever expert(s) gave this a 100J should be disqualified.


The margins aren't even cut straight, it looks like a paper inclusion at the lower left, and it may be the scan but the paper looks a bit toned.

Part of the appeal of grading is that you know what you are going to get. A stamp graded 100J should be one that cannot be improved upon, there is none better. Yes the margins on this one are jumbo but they are not equal. It looks childishly bad. If I had this "100J" in my album, the stamp would still be on my want list to upgrade/improve.

Someone here bought a $20 CV #731 souvenir sheet and spent no more than 10 seconds to cut it up into four "jumbo" singles that now have a SMQ CV of $45 each = $180 total. It shouldn't be that easy. At least put some effort into making the margins look nice and balanced, and straight. And it is OK for the grader to be extra harsh on these modern fabricated items, even the slightest natural paper imperfection should drop it to a 98J.

Related, I think the SMQ CV for 100J imperf singles should be dropped, to be no higher than the piece they were cut out of. A 100J imperf plate single should not be selling for 2 or 3 times the price of a NH plate block, it just encourages more people to chop up those multiples to make a quick buck.

I do not care what grade it is. The only person wanting it graded is after financial reward not collecting it for what it is.

The challenge then is to find someone else equally like minded to buy it.

Items with inflated values reminds me of this scene in Trading Places where an expensive watch is being pawned.. This is where the true value is revealed.

Hey, that's still better than Diddley.

Sometimes I amuse myself by looking at the graded and slabbed cigarette cards offered by sellers (chiefly in the US). Want to pay £200+ for a card worth a couple of pence? Here's your chance!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35587798...rs+mona+lisa

Per the Scott 731a, have always felt trimming a single out of a multiple like that was vandalism. Destroying eight stamps for one. No Grade.

Start a bash grading thread. This is supposed to be about PSE looking for experts. They are in short supply.