I have posted numerous times in the "What was in your mailbox?" thread about the additions to my France collection. I bought the basic collection, which goes up to about 1945, housed in two hingeless Lindner albums from Apfelbaum a few years ago and little by little I've been filling in the gaps as I can afford them. One section which had a lot of holes was in the semi-postals, especially the early ones, and last month I finally got the last one I needed, so I have them complete up to 1945. The last target to fall was Scott B-10, the 5 franc plus 5 franc "La Marseillaise" dark blue and black, from the 1917-1919 set. It wasn't cheap, but I got a nice copy at a very reasonable price. Prior to buying it, though, I came across a copy on
ebay that right up until an hour before the close, there were very few bids and they were uncharacteristically low. I thought "aha, here's a chance to score a very desirable stamp at a good price." Fortunately though before taking a plunge I zoomed in on the ad to maximum magnification and saw, in the lower left margin the word "faux", French for "fake", in the same color and font as the word "Ruffe", the name of the engraver. The stamp eventually sold for, depending on how you look at it, absurdly little (if it had been genuine) or absurdly high (for what is clearly a fake), I think it was about $128. Looking at it closely I could now see that word and realized it was a pretty poor fake at that. Look especially at the Greek frieze around the value labels and you can see how crude it is. It's also poorly centered. I won't shame the seller by revealing their name but I did notice that nowhere in the ad did it say that it was a fake. I don't have access to any of the specialized French catalogues but Scott doesn't mention the existence of fake versions of this stamp. Does anyone on the forum know how common this one is?
Posted 04/17/2026 8:57 pm
