Are All Of These Fiume Stamps Fake?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***
I tried my best to take the clearest pictures I could, all individually, so there should be no problems with somebody sharing their expertise on the matter. These stamps all came from the same lot as my EFO debris example posted in the EFOs section.

I have several questions: Are all of these fake? I assume so, but I would much rather be sure.

If so, how can you spot that they are fake?

For what purpose would such items as these have been created? I don't know if these are considered particularily valuable stamps and thus worth the effort to forge to scam a collector.

Where and when were these likely made? Would these be contempary to the original genuine items, or produced much later, or even recently?

Lastly, as forgeries, are they in any way collectable, knowing they are not the genuine item, do they hold any curiosity or interest, or are they just "rubbish fakes made to con people out of their money and should be disposed of"?

Here is every image of the stamps in question (including an Oltre Giuba because it was from the same lot):

The link I gave you in your other Fiume topic applies just as well here. You can look for yourself. I have my own opinions (a couple of stamps at most MAY be genuine) but see what you come up with.

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...rgeries.html

I would personally rather see your opinions. I did see that link after you sent it the first time, but I am asking for the opinion of somebody who knows more than I do about the subject. As I said, I assume they are fake, but I am specifically posting this to hear the opinion of somebody else. I am not and would never consider myself an expert, in fact, I am quite a newb. (Despite collecting since I was 4, I have never had any interaction with philatelists or philatelic groups in which knowledge or definitions of terms etc would be shared and explained) I personally don't quite understand everything explained by this blogger. If you have opinions, please share them, I don't want to draw my own opinions, as it would end up being conjecture. Up until yesterday, I believed these were all real. If you have knowledge or thoughts and you feel you could enlighten me, I don't see the harm in sharing them. I photographed each one of these and uploaded them for that purpose.

You don't need an "expert" for this. Anyone can view the very well done Big Blue blog and reach a conclusion. Is the cordage well defined on the ships issue? Yes or no. Are the lines in the halo as discussed in your other thread well defined or not? Yes or no. Is there a gap in the horizontal lower right arch portion of the arches issue? Yes or no. And overall a great place to start is whether or not the "O"'s in Poste (applies to all of these) is oval or round. There is not much nuance to this and it is a great learning opportunity so that you need not rely on others.

So, do you still want others to look at each image and make a determination using the same exact resource you now have access to or would you like to do the work? Nobody is going to come along with special secret info that is not available to mere mortals. You have the tools to answer your own question right now this minute.

PS: If you still want someone to tell you the answers let me/us know and me/we will do so happily. Try first though.

I agree with ROGDCAM , you been given the correct info.

I asked a question to people who have more knowledge about this subject than I do, spent time trying to get good quality images with my terrible camera, uploading them, asking several questions (none of which got any answers) and the response boils down to "find out yourself, you expect me to, what, answer your questions?" The very first post I made on this website was me saying I wanted to ask questions, to which the response was "ask away, we will answer" etc. You clearly know more about this subject than I do, but instead of simply answering my questions, you have chosen to be unnecesarily condescending.

"do you still want others to look at each image and make a determination"
Why do you think I made this post? If I was confident in my own judgment, I wouldn't be here.

"Is the cordage well defined on the ships issue? Yes or no."
I don't even know what that means, and clearly there is no point asking you, because no matter how many times I make it clear that I am a newb and do not have confidence in myself, you seem to think it's silly of me to ask somebody who does know what they are talking about.

My questions regarding the following:

For what purpose would such items as these have been created? I don't know if these are considered particularily valuable stamps and thus worth the effort to forge to scam a collector.

Where and when were these likely made? Would these be contempary to the original genuine items, or produced much later, or even recently?

Lastly, as forgeries, are they in any way collectable, knowing they are not the genuine item, do they hold any curiosity or interest, or are they just "rubbish fakes made to con people out of their money and should be disposed of"?

Have all gone completely ignored.

If you wanted to help, or answer, you could have. I already said many times, I don't know what these terms like cordage and such mean, I'm not as old as you are, I am not as advanced as you are, you clearly know more about this subject than I do. Yes, anybody can see that blog and come to a conclusion, but I have made it clear that I do not have the confidence that my own conclusion will be correct, since I know nothing. You've upset me and made me regret wasting my time asking a question about something I was interested in... to somebody I thought would have the answers.

ELLIE ----- We are trying to make this a learning experience .

Ellie - We are trying to teach you to fish so you can help yourself.

Take the "cordage" issue as an example. The blog describes what the genuine cordage should look like and what the fake cordage looks like. It includes a closeup image of the cordage area. What would I do if I did not know what cordage was? Google the definition, find the item on the stamp design and conclude what was real and what was fake. The same applies to everything else. Are the "O"'s oval or round being a no-brainer. You don't need more knowledge to know oval from round. Do you?

I am not trying to be difficult here, but you will find out quickly that there is a difference between asking for help and wanting others to do the work for you.

Most of all:

If you don't learn for yourself, how do you know you are being given accurate information from the "experts"?

Knowledge is power.

I'll give my opinion on the answers to your questions. Forgeries are usually created to fool someone into buying them. Some forgeries were produced soon after the original stamps were created, but others are created later. Those stamp forgeries were either "good" or they were "bad". The good forgeries were hard to differentiate from the originals, while the bad ones have some obvious fault that makes it easy to tell.

Forgers then attempted to pass these onto the public in order to make a profit. For example, if the value of the stamp was $10, and the forger spent $1 making it, and selling it to you for $10, then their profit would be $9 per stamp. These days, you have sophisticated equipment to make some good forgeries very quickly, and very cheaply. So even the simplest stamps can be copied now. You can buy them easily on ebay. (If someone is trying to sell you a newly issued stamp that you can still buy in the Post Office for less than the Post Office price, then you have a forgery or a theft.)

Now, are some forgeries valuable? Sperati forgeries of classical stamps are well-known and highly prized. You can google his name and see a lot of information about him, why he did it, how he was caught, etc. But there are many, many forgeries that are so crude and were issued in astronomical quantities, that they are only worth some money to specialists, and even that amount of money could be something from a fraction of the stamp's face value to maybe twice the face value.

Scott has tried to put some value on some forgeries, but these days newly issued stamps are being forged so quickly that they can't keep up.

These are only my opinions on forgeries, and others may post their own thoughts. It is really up to you whether you want to put more time and effort into identifying and saving your forgeries. I personally keep all of the ones that I have identified, and just note that it is a forgery.

"What would I do if I did not know what cordage was? Google the definition, find the item on the stamp design and conclude what was real and what was fake."

The thing is, I can use Google as much as I want, any time I want. I'm lonely, I'm depressed, I want friends, and I want to talk to people. Naturally, I want to talk to people about things I like. Google is not a replacement for talking to real people who can give answers to the same questions, usually even better. I am not sure if you are aware, but Google uses an AI to generate results now, which almost always contains inaccurate information, that somebody like you can point out is wrong, but I couldn't. I would much rather you, or anybody else here, answer my questions, than have the soulless AI tell me something that may or may not be correct.

I am isolated, depressed, alone. If I had wanted to just get answers fast, yeah, I could use Google and get maybe a somewhat correct result, but as I said in my first post, I want to make friends, since I have none. I would much rather have a human teacher tell me that 2+2=4 and why that is, than an AI telling me, without any degree of human interaction, emotion, or connection.

"there is a difference between asking for help and wanting others to do the work for you."

Yes, there is a difference, but nowhere did I say I wanted anybody to "do the work for me", I want to talk to people and learn directly from them, have them share their knowledge. You said you have opinions, I asked you to share them. As I already said many times, I have absolutely no confidence in myself, not only in relation to philately, but in general. There is nothing I hate more than people online who talk from confidence rather than expertise, and it is clear that most people here have the expertise to answer my questions. As I said, I can look at that blog and come to a conclusion myself, but I would not trust my conclusion. I do not know what I am talking about. Chances are, I am less than half the age of most people on this site, and have less than a fraction of the knowledge. When I ask questions here, it is to interact with people, and learn about something I just happen to like. I spent my entire life alone and I have access to Google, if I just wanted to use Google as the be all and end all, I really would not be here at all.

Generally, however, these responses make me quite sad. Given that most people from my generation are already stuck on their phones watching TikTok 24/7, I don't think wanting a human to answer a question should be seen as some kind of a request for painstaking manual labour.

If you had read the information in the link rogdcam provided the definition of cordage, along with an image, is given: "Cordage is defined as ropes or cords especially : the ropes in the rigging of a ship."

This is from the link:

A clipped section from one of your stamps:

The ropes or "cordage" look different from one stamp to another, don't you think? Hence, yours is probably a forgery.

But the ropes on the first boat look good, so does that mean that stamp is genuine? They all came from the same lot, so I expected them all to be fake. And how about that Oltre Giuba one? That is not found in the link anyway.

Once again, I have to ask, were these stamps, genuine ones that is, ever considered to be valuable? I wouldn't imagine that a forger would put in the effort to make a forgery if not. Would forgeries like these be exclusively produced with the intention of scamming a collector, or would they ever appear actually used on post, to scam the post office?

Another weird thing about that one is that the 22 in the overprint is off, as if both numerals had been added separate of eachother.

Forgeries were also created to meet collector demand in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries. They really were not created with malicious intent but for small Countries with simple, easily forged designs in particular collectors wanted to fill those empty album spaces and dealers obliged. That is why you will see low catalog value stamps heavily faked which is counterintuitive if the intent is deception for large profit.

I guess novelty, and the florid character of D'Annunzio, made these issues and the fakes very saleable. This is the guy who made the "Volo su Vienna", a 700-mile round trip in a biplane to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna, so he was a war hero. He also made a short flight out of a window in 1922 (Il Volo su Marciapiede).