Bogus Pacific Mail Steamship Cancels In Upcoming Siegel Auction

I pointed this out to Eric and Richard at Chicagopex, and later during the show Mike Morissey emailed pointing out the same thing.

This collection being offered at an estimate of $5,000 to $7,000 is egregious. Fully half of the collection is comprised of fake/fantasy cancels. Seems like no one at Siegel did ANY vetting of the material.

It's lot 1016 in Sale 1367.

I include the images from their PDF below, and I have watermarked "BOGUS!" on the pages that I believe consist of the fantasy material or fake cancels. In addition, I believe the COSTA RICA cancel being offered on a page I didn't mark is bogus as well. The font and strike method look like a modern creation to me.

That said, there ARE a considerable number of genuine cancels in the collection, and it does have considerable value overall, but less than half of the material.

If these all were genuine, the lot actually would have value far exceeding their estimate, and would likely garner well into 5 figures.

There are quite a lot of them, aren't there? I had not looked at the sale yet, so I was not aware of this lot.

Realized $8,000 with the buyer premium. Far too much (IMO) for a lot where more than half the items are bogus.

Sadly I ended up the underbidder on the lot I wanted.

If a collector bought them he paid about 75%-80% of retail for the genuine examples. If a dealer bought them then the possibility exists that the bogus examples will find their way to the market.