Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Stamp Forgeries
Because of my particular interest, I of course looked at the newly loaded Hong Kong section of 90 examples. So far, the forgeries are divided into two categories; stamps (and overprints) and postmarks. This website may be of particular interest to Nl1947 (Nelson) as he has expressed an interest in compiling a work of reference on Hong Kong forgeries.
Although the site shows promise, a fundamental aspect of forgery detection needs to be included; namely narrative. It is not clear if this will be included. If not, then this is a major shortcoming.
Apart from the occasional descriptive label imbedded within an image, the reader is left to work out what the differences actually are between genuine and forged examples. Now this can be quite obvious as far as Spiro forgeries are concerned, as these are the least accomplished of all Hong Kong forgeries.
But when it comes to some of the overprints, particularly the Jubilee issue and inverted rarities, the lack of description invariably raises the question, “what characteristics actually make this a forgery then†?
This situation is made even more frustrating in the ‘forged postmark’ section, again due to the omission of any commentary and in most cases, no comparative genuine examples.
The problems are threefold as I see it. Firstly, there is no cross reference to, nor even mention of, the source of the forgery examples. There is though a glossary at the end of the Hong Kong section, entitled ‘LITERATURE for further research’. Now this collection of articles and studies may have been the source of the Hong Kong forgery details on the website but this is unclear. As it stands, it merely serves as a listing of what has been published. Secondly, any general collector would be totally incapable of knowing exactly what to look for without adequate pointers; and thirdly (again because of the lack of commentary), some of the supposed forgeries are somewhat questionable.
Now I haven’t had the time to compare those examples in question to illustrations in reference books but they are notable in that they are not rare postmarks, nor are they even scarce.
Here is an example from that website (the author does permit reproduction of his material): a ‘F1’ obliterator (Foochow) on a very poor QV 6 cent lilac.
For this to be a postmark forgery, any difference to the genuine must be extremely subtle, for I cannot see anything wrong. Furthermore, as a genuine strike is not uncommon, why produce one on such a feeble specimen? Consequently, I am unconvinced….. I could of course be wrong.
And there lies the problem. In the absence of any narrative one is left in limbo and in some instances doubt; this in turn could result in unnecessary distrust of one’s own specimens or reticence about buying new material. Perhaps I am being premature and these apparent omissions are in the offing. If this is the case, surely it would have been better to have four wheels on the wagon before putting it on the road! Or at least state that intention clearly.
Time permitting, I hope to contact the website owner about this, particularly as he invites comments and contributions about other forgeries.
As it is unfair of me to wade in on the basis of a sampling of just one country, It would be interesting if other members here could look at this website and comment with opinions on their own particular field.
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Following on from my original post, I have since found that the outlook doesn’t look good for the addition of detailed information to the Hong Kong forgery section (for those stamps already listed). It seems that I have stumbled upon something more serious.
Without contacting the site owner, I found the source of all the forgeries. All the examples shown have recently sold in auction. The description of each item gave no information that would be of any benefit to the new owner and by the same token, no benefit to users of the website; other than confirmation that each one has one or more forged features.
Although each description states that the stamp is genuine, either an overprint, a single postmark or more than one postmark has been applied over the top.
Scouring the posts on another stamp forum, I found that a fellow member claimed that the seller of the material was involved in “an extensive, forged cancel operation…†According to that member, the seller, who is based in Canada, has been under close scrutiny by a number of Canadian collectors, including an expertizer. It is claimed that formerly, most of his offerings were listed with no mention of forgery in the description. Latterly, for some reason, the seller has explicitly listed forgeries interspersed with others listed as genuine. This member contends that this is a deliberate strategy of obfuscation.
Furthermore, the member warns that Carribbean material has been extensively forged. I can confirm that I have seen a lot of such material in the listings.
Previously, I posted an image of a Foochow ‘F1’ obliterator on a QV 6c lilac. My contention was that this seemed genuine. Well it seems I may in have been in part correct. The size, colour, format are right but the cancellation has been scanned from a genuine example, extracted and manipulated by a ‘Photoshop’ type software program and then printed onto a genuine stamp. This same process applies to all the stamps illustrated.
In some instances, preliminary work has been done on the basic adhesive. Bleaching has been carried out, probably to remove a previous postmark, rendering the stamp very faded or changed in colour.
Others are EXTREMELY difficult to identify as forgeries as they are expertly done. And this is why collectors need to be very alert when buying on the internet. Even close inspection of actual examples (not images) will convince most that they are genuine. So this alert extends to first hand examination too.
This does not bode well for postmark collectors. As genuine examples can command very high prices, (some are priced in Stanley Gibbons in the thousands) there is every likelihood that further examples will be produced and infest the market.
Unfortunately, modern technology makes this kind of forgery operation relatively easy to repeat ad infinitum.
As for the website Stamp Forgeries, the owner/author needs to explicitly document this information. By leaving the images as they currently are, with no explanation, will only cause confusion (as it did with me when I looked at the Foochow ‘F1’ example).
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For those that have any interest in forgeries, a Danish member of another stamp forum has been building a new website dedicated to the subject. Although the website seems to be in its infancy, the images I have seen are of high quality:
Stamp Forgeries
Because of my particular interest, I of course looked at the newly loaded Hong Kong section of 90 examples. So far, the forgeries are divided into two categories; stamps (and overprints) and postmarks. This website may be of particular interest to Nl1947 (Nelson) as he has expressed an interest in compiling a work of reference on Hong Kong forgeries.
Although the site shows promise, a fundamental aspect of forgery detection needs to be included; namely narrative. It is not clear if this will be included. If not, then this is a major shortcoming.
Apart from the occasional descriptive label imbedded within an image, the reader is left to work out what the differences actually are between genuine and forged examples. Now this can be quite obvious as far as Spiro forgeries are concerned, as these are the least accomplished of all Hong Kong forgeries.
But when it comes to some of the overprints, particularly the Jubilee issue and inverted rarities, the lack of description invariably raises the question, “what characteristics actually make this a forgery then†?
This situation is made even more frustrating in the ‘forged postmark’ section, again due to the omission of any commentary and in most cases, no comparative genuine examples.
The problems are threefold as I see it. Firstly, there is no cross reference to, nor even mention of, the source of the forgery examples. There is though a glossary at the end of the Hong Kong section, entitled ‘LITERATURE for further research’. Now this collection of articles and studies may have been the source of the Hong Kong forgery details on the website but this is unclear. As it stands, it merely serves as a listing of what has been published. Secondly, any general collector would be totally incapable of knowing exactly what to look for without adequate pointers; and thirdly (again because of the lack of commentary), some of the supposed forgeries are somewhat questionable.
Now I haven’t had the time to compare those examples in question to illustrations in reference books but they are notable in that they are not rare postmarks, nor are they even scarce.
Here is an example from that website (the author does permit reproduction of his material): a ‘F1’ obliterator (Foochow) on a very poor QV 6 cent lilac.
For this to be a postmark forgery, any difference to the genuine must be extremely subtle, for I cannot see anything wrong. Furthermore, as a genuine strike is not uncommon, why produce one on such a feeble specimen? Consequently, I am unconvinced….. I could of course be wrong.
And there lies the problem. In the absence of any narrative one is left in limbo and in some instances doubt; this in turn could result in unnecessary distrust of one’s own specimens or reticence about buying new material. Perhaps I am being premature and these apparent omissions are in the offing. If this is the case, surely it would have been better to have four wheels on the wagon before putting it on the road! Or at least state that intention clearly.
Time permitting, I hope to contact the website owner about this, particularly as he invites comments and contributions about other forgeries.
As it is unfair of me to wade in on the basis of a sampling of just one country, It would be interesting if other members here could look at this website and comment with opinions on their own particular field.
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re: New website dedicated to forgeries.
Following on from my original post, I have since found that the outlook doesn’t look good for the addition of detailed information to the Hong Kong forgery section (for those stamps already listed). It seems that I have stumbled upon something more serious.
Without contacting the site owner, I found the source of all the forgeries. All the examples shown have recently sold in auction. The description of each item gave no information that would be of any benefit to the new owner and by the same token, no benefit to users of the website; other than confirmation that each one has one or more forged features.
Although each description states that the stamp is genuine, either an overprint, a single postmark or more than one postmark has been applied over the top.
Scouring the posts on another stamp forum, I found that a fellow member claimed that the seller of the material was involved in “an extensive, forged cancel operation…†According to that member, the seller, who is based in Canada, has been under close scrutiny by a number of Canadian collectors, including an expertizer. It is claimed that formerly, most of his offerings were listed with no mention of forgery in the description. Latterly, for some reason, the seller has explicitly listed forgeries interspersed with others listed as genuine. This member contends that this is a deliberate strategy of obfuscation.
Furthermore, the member warns that Carribbean material has been extensively forged. I can confirm that I have seen a lot of such material in the listings.
Previously, I posted an image of a Foochow ‘F1’ obliterator on a QV 6c lilac. My contention was that this seemed genuine. Well it seems I may in have been in part correct. The size, colour, format are right but the cancellation has been scanned from a genuine example, extracted and manipulated by a ‘Photoshop’ type software program and then printed onto a genuine stamp. This same process applies to all the stamps illustrated.
In some instances, preliminary work has been done on the basic adhesive. Bleaching has been carried out, probably to remove a previous postmark, rendering the stamp very faded or changed in colour.
Others are EXTREMELY difficult to identify as forgeries as they are expertly done. And this is why collectors need to be very alert when buying on the internet. Even close inspection of actual examples (not images) will convince most that they are genuine. So this alert extends to first hand examination too.
This does not bode well for postmark collectors. As genuine examples can command very high prices, (some are priced in Stanley Gibbons in the thousands) there is every likelihood that further examples will be produced and infest the market.
Unfortunately, modern technology makes this kind of forgery operation relatively easy to repeat ad infinitum.
As for the website Stamp Forgeries, the owner/author needs to explicitly document this information. By leaving the images as they currently are, with no explanation, will only cause confusion (as it did with me when I looked at the Foochow ‘F1’ example).
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