China: How To Identify Originals/Reprints C2 People's Political Conference

The third set of the P.R. of China, C 2 (Commemorating Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) consists of two different designs:

50/100 Conference Hall
300/500 Mao Tse-tung behind a rostrum
There is also a Northeast China-set with the same designs (C2NE)
1000/1500 Conference Hall
5000/20.000 Mao Tse-tung behind a rostrum


A set of reprints. Offered for sale as originals, at a very elevated price. This kind of deliberate fraud , and sometimes unintentional mistakes, demands your attention to the differences between originals and reprints.

It is quite important to distinguish originals from reprints, for originals are way more valuable:
C2 Originals: 40 dollar mint, 30 dollar used
C2 Reprints: 10 dollar mint, 3 dollar used

C2NE Originals: 120 dollar mint, 120 dollar used
C2NE Reprints: 10 dollar mint, 3 dollar used

There were only some 100.000 sets printed of the NE-set, so that value could be even higher at some auctions. I've never seen a postally used example of the original stamps, so they must be rare indeed, and so the high value of used sets seems to be warranted.

DIFFERENCES
In the Conference Hall-design these are easy to spot:

Original:
sun rays in coat of arms touch the inner circular frame,
the first top Chinese character square,
star in the coat of arms short.


The square vs rectangle box in the first character is a clear difference

Reprint
sun rays in coat of arms not touching the inner frame,
the first top Chinese character rectangle,
star in the coat of arms large,
minor differences in the last two top Chinese characters.
date1948 and map touched up (also larger Taiwan)


Reprint of the Conference hall-stamps. Pay attention to the rectangle box in the character and the sun rays not touching the inner frame.


Close image of an original stamp: rays touch the inner frame.


The Mao-design is much more difficult:

Original:
vertical shading lines of podium reach the top,
the first Chinese character with larger box,
background shading around Mao Zedong's head heavier.

Reprint:

vertical shading lines of podium shorter and don't reach the top,
the first Chinese character with smaller box,
lighter background shading around Mao Zedong's head.



Original and reprint of the Mao-stamps. Originals are way darker than reprints. It can be quite difficult to know for sure if those lines of the rostrum reach the top or not... Better focus on the difference in colour.


The lines of the rostrum in originals vs reprints...

All in all, a not too difficult set, and now you know how not to be fooled...