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PHILATELIC FORGERIES
One of the most difficult areas of philately is learning how to
detect fakes or fraudulent stamps. The first forged stamp emerged
twenty years after the very first stamp was issued by Great
Britain in 1840. This was a stamp that was put out on the market
with the intent to defraud collectors and philatelists into
believing it was a real one.
There are two distinct types of fraudulent stamps. The first is
called a fake, which means someone took a genuine stamp and
altered it. By altering they could overprint, alter stamp design,
change perforation numbers… to make them appear as something else.
The other is a forgery, which is when someone actually creates a
whole new object to look identical to the real one.
The first forgery was produced by a man who eventually gained his
place in history as one of the master forgers in philately. Jean
de Sperati would obtain a real stamp and bleach it before using a
process called photolithography, which would create the desired
copy. Towards the end of his lifetime he had become so famous as a
master forger that he sometimes would sign his work on the back
and today some of his forgeries are actually worth more than the
real stamps with collectors.
Postal counterfeits fall into a different category altogether.
These are produced for the sole purpose of defrauding the
government out of stamp prices. They are reproductions of the
current postal stamps in large quantities. The difference between
a postal forgery and a philatelic forgery is that the former is
strictly done in mass production for the purpose of saving money
on the real stamps. A philatelic forgery is done in an attempt to
fool collectors into thinking they have a genuine collector’s
item. Not only valuable stamps are forged. Some collectors will
actually look for a forgery in an attempt to complete their
collection. Simply having a complete book of stamps is enough for
some and they don’t mind having a couple of forgeries in there.
Some stamps are high in value simply due to a misprint or some
small variety in production. When this happens some people will
take the cheaper version of the exact same stamp and alter it in
such a way that it appears to be the varied version thereby
increasing its value. These stamps are called fakes. Collectors
need to be aware of these fakes so that they don’t end up paying a
high price for something that’s basically worthless.
There are stamps that are classified as “fantasies”. These stamps
have been created and presented as stamps from places that have
never existed.
Even governments have been known to put out forgeries of their
enemies stamps. During wartime the allies created forgeries of the
German stamps so that their soldiers behind enemy lines could use
the mail system without paying a cent to the German government.
The study of forgeries and fakes can present quite a challenge to
many philatelists. It becomes quite interesting to look in to the
history of how many of these came into play and all the different
methods of creating these philatelic frauds.
Original Article Source:
http://www.RareStamp.com |
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