China: An Out Of The Question Fake

When you really do want to tread on the criminal path of faking, at least try to make it plausible that it's an original stamp. So faking one of the rarest stamps in the world is not such a good idea. China, the famous The whole country is red-stamp... Would be worth tens of thousands at the least, but probably much more, especially on a cover! Well, lets make it dirty and beaten up as hell, then maybe we will fall for it. You could fall for it: forgeries of Chinese stamps can be very, very well executed. Someone paid over 4000 euro for this cover on ebay. And when I'm wrong, someone paid very little for a true gem.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/406529329222?_skw=china

A link to the sale and something more than those tiny images would be useful. Otherwise, this topic offers nothing educational. We cannot see what the issues are with the stamp/cover. We don't know how or where it sold. We are told that it is "fake" and someone paid 4000 Euros.

You could be more kind. I thought this forum was one of the more gentle ones. Will delete it.

The simple lesson here is to never buy a high value stamp without a cert, unless you are an expert or don't care about your money.

Just post a link. It could be an interesting topic but we can't see anything useful nor is there any context. Why delete it. We're not six years old taking our toys home because Little Debbie looked at us funny.

You posted two extremely small pictures that show no details. They do not pop up and resize when you click on them. Consequently, the pictures cannot illustrate your point. The information you posted, then, is little more than someone is asking a lot of money for a forgery of a very expensive item if real.

As illustrative as your other posts have been, this post becomes a statement of yesterday's news because the pictures do not show anything. Edit: Remarking that is not unkind. It, just is an observation.

Unfortunately the images are quite low resolution, so become pixellated when enlarged.



You can just about see that the cancel is dated 25 November 1968, which would be correct as the stamp was issued on 24 November.

Point taken... Have deleted the images and added the link. Thanks for trying to get me on the right path. I'm still new to this forum, so be patient.

Here are some screenshots of the listing, so people can see once the link no longer works.

NSK - Thanks for posting the pics!

I find this topic interesting. So, how can we tell that the stamp is a fake? Or the cover for that matter? I guess answering the first question answers the second. So?

Rogdcam: Some background to this stamp: These exist in two formats: a large one, that was never issued for it being considered too large. There are some 10 stamps known to exist. The small one, the one on this cover, was issued november 24, 1968. It was redrawn after someone discovered Taiwan was left white, so not 'the whole country' was red. A very embarrasing mistake for Chinese authorities. They quickly ordered selling this stamp to be stopped, and all copies to be returned. All this within one day, so very few stamps exist today. I am not aware of any stamp known to exist on a cover... That's very suspicious. And why selling it on ebay when this gem, if genuine, is worth tens of thousands? The cancellation reads Beijing, by the way. I can try to translate the other text, but my Chinese is as rusty as iron in a Dutch landscape.

According to Google the red text reads "Highest Instruction. The core force leading our cause is the Communist Party of China. The theoretical basis guiding our thought is Marxism-Leninism." The other text is standard address fields. Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution stuff.

The dirt on the stamp, particularly the dirt on the perf edges (assuming it is dirt and not shadow) doesn't match with the stains on the cover.

Tigre584, thank you for posting the link.

I have copied three of the images from the listing, because ebay will delete them at some point.





As someone who knows nothing about this stamp apart from what I have read concerning the rarity of the genuine item, I hope an expert such as yourself might like to explain at least one distinguishing feature of the fakes.

Phil

Beaten to it by NSK!

Flightle Bee: Thanks for that translation. It's one of Mao's many quotations. So this could be a genuine cover from 1968, with the stamps removed and this forgery attached, together with a fake cancellation. For this cancellation seems odd. It seems to read 1968.30.11.25. Genuine cancellations should read: 1968.11.30.25. The last number is the hour: 25? Would like to know the adress. Can someone translate it?