My so-called stamp collection was, in many respects, a group of various older collections I had accumulated several years ago, but never got around to entirely integrating into a real collection. My focus was always on pre-1940 colonial Africa and to a lesser degree pre-QEII Caribbean.

I’ve been slowly working my way through this material for the past 15 years or so and selling it piece by piece. In the process, I’ve learned more about my “collection” than I ever thought possible, primarily because I want to be sure I’m properly identifying everything before I list it for sale.

For those of you who collect the earlier Portuguese colonies, you’ll probably understand why I have avoided working on portions of these particular colonies. I had purchased two mostly mint Portuguese colonies collections and I’ve managed to work through much of the more straight-forward, easier to identify material while bypassing some of the headache-inducing stuff. In recent days, I’ve decided to get serious about some of the Mozambique stamps where forgeries abound.

Today, I’m asking if anyone here can help confirm my belief that all three of these 1921 Ceres surcharges are genuine. They are Scott numbers 232 to 234 and all are 15 x 14 perf. I am pretty sure the 60c stamp is on the chalk paper as a genuine stamp should be. (That stamp’s paper is yellowish.) I am far less certain that the other two stamps are the acetinado (satiny) paper on which genuine surcharges should be found.



I didn’t find any help online, but did get some help from a brief article in the ISPP Portu-Info journal, Issue No. 139, January-March 2001, Volume 36. (I had belonged to ISPP for a couple of years several years ago.) John Cross wrote a brief article about these three stamps, but it was written for those who are already intimately familiar with Portugal and colonies philately and all of the nitty gritty details involved in the convoluted 19th and early 20th century issues, reprints, forgeries, etc. IF I am reading correctly, John is including a figure that I believe is from an earlier Portuguese author who identified the horizontal relationship between the colored bar that obliterates each stamp’s original value and the new surcharge value on genuine stamps. These settings were based on a vertical line drawn downward from the right end of the bar obliterating the stamp’s original value through the new surcharge value, just as I have done for each stamp in the accompanying image.

Again, IF I am reading correctly, that earlier author identified three different horizontal settings for the 10c stamps and two settings for each of the 30c and 60c stamps. My 10c specimen corresponds with a genuine type III. My 30c corresponds to a type II and my 60c corresponds to a type I. For the 10c forgeries, the vertical line passes to the left of or through the numeral “1.” Similar information for the forgeries of the 30c and 60c stamps wasn’t provided.

I am looking forward to hearing from anyone who may be able to provide information confirming my preliminary conclusion. Or, explain how I have misidentified any or all of these stamps. Thanks!

Tom