Dowager Stamps In Old Album: Forgeries ?

The stamps are very pale, almost all colour gone. I suspect they are cheap forgeries. The 1894 series is without watermark! Please your expertise opinion. Thanks, Cor.

All fakes made for the philatelic community .

Yes thanks floortrader, I am not surprised.

Perhaps one could explain in a little detail why these are fakes?

The paper is way off and the ink is wrong. Just an opinion. The only other explanation is that the camera picture is wrong.

The absolutely massive margins are the first giveaway that these are not real stamps as Chinese stamps from well over a century ago were just not made that way. They were more cramped and by now would be more "used" looking with some perf issues and other wear and tear, perhaps dirtier and so on.

The ink is an unconvincing imitation of the real ink, too bright.

The cancellations are clearly fake being barely cancels at all, and all of them look like the came from different applications of the same two fake cancelling devices.

Imitations of stamps were widely sold a century or so ago for collectors who simply could not afford the real thing, and everyone probably knew they were imitations used just to fill spaces. Also, there were a lot of copies of stamps printed for tourists who visited these countries and just wanted something that looked like the real thing but cheap.

In Japan, such stamps were applied to what were called "tourist sheets," large folded sheets of decorative bordered paper with dozens of "stamps" mounted on them like a very large album page. Also easy to take home because they took up no room.

Over time, many of these copies of stamps have innocently made their way into stamp collections where later collectors wonder if they are real or not.

Thanks all of you for the explanation. Little by little I will become more experienced and will more easely recognise these forgeries myself. For now I need your help on another set of dowagers, I will open another lead to ask your advice again. Cor.