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| Forged and fascimile newspaper stamps | ||||
| by Mike Goodman | ||||
Like collectors a century earlier, the writer could not afford to complete sets of genuine issues, and turned his attention to the forgeries and facsimiles. Genuine specimens of the large format 1865 issue are well outnumbered by forgeries. An extensive description of these dubious characters appears in Rev Robert Brisco Earee's classic work Album Weeds, first published 1882, when the products of master forgers such as Sperati had yet to enjoy classic status. Later on United States philatelists such as Clarence Brazier and J Frank Braceland Jr followed up the study of the 'album weeds' of the 1865 issue with a study of later forgeries and facsimiles. Braceland wrote a series of articles in The American Specialist in 1968-69. These have proved an invaluable source of information. Most of the forged 1865 stamps are easily detected, as they are the wrong colour. Genuine stamps are the 5c blue, 10c green and 25c red. Among my forgeries are a 10c blue. More exotic shades such as gold are mentioned by Earee. Where the colour is correct, the shade is often wrong. Even when the colour is almost the same as the genuine specimen, there are other give away signs. Genuine stamps are perforated 12 to 12.5 and engraved. The imprint at the foot 'National Bank Note Co' is clear. The forgeries are surface printed and the imprint is poorly executed, for example the 'Ns' are large or inverted. The perforations are also wrong. The forgeries are often postmarked, while genuinely used stamps, where they survived, were often cancelled by a brush and ink. Outright forgeries should not be confused with official reprints for collectors. These are of a different shade to the originals, are on hard white paper, and are listed as Scott PR5, 6 and 7. Nor should they be confused with proofs which are extensively listed in the Scott Specialised Catalogue in a different section from the newspaper stamps. In 1875 the large formats were superseded by the 'Lovely Ladies'. At a time when the top value definitive was 90c, the series ran to $60. Initially the set ran from a lowest value of 2c, but a 1c value was added in 1885*. How many wealthy philatelists dipped their hands into their pockets and bought a mint set? I suspect very few. Which is why German publishers Louis and Richard Senf of Leipzig stepped in to provide collectors with what they called 'facsimiles'. They were given away free or sold to subscribers of the Illustrierters Briefmarchen Journal. They are finely executed, but to save himself from accusations of deliberately trying to fool collectors Senf added the word 'falsch' to the design. The Senf facsimiles are perforated 12.5 whilst the originals are perforated 12. Unfortunately some unscrupulous dealers added forged postmarks to conceal the inscription. The United States authorities were alarmed and tried to ban their import. So Senf added an overprint 'Facsimile'. Once again some dealers tried to postmark over the evidence that they were not genuine. So Senf kept enlarging the lettering of the overprint. The earliest and smallest overprints measure 9mm x 1mm, with the later and largest ones 21mm x 2.5mm. Altogether Braceland lists seven 'editions' of the overprint. This is one reason why I find these facsimiles so interesting. Early editions were in serif type, and later ones in sans serif capitals. The colour of the overprint often varied according to the colour of the stamp. For example, the sixth edition overprints in sans serif capitals are red on the $9 yellow, $36 and $48 brown, but black on the $12 green, $24 black and $60 mauve. Including the 1c added in the fifth edition*, there were 25 values in a full set. With mounting criticism in philatelic circles for the distribution of the Senf facsimiles the readers of their journal were polled on the issue, and production ceased in 1890. If Senf was the quality copier, there were inferior imitations which in no way could be confused with the genuine item. The crudest and probably the commonest are attributed to one Isenstein in Germany. The cents values were printed from two different plates. The lower cent values (2c to 10c) are in black on sheets of 21, showing three stamps for each of the seven denominations arranged in three rows of seven stamps, with a different value in each vertical row. The 12c to 96c stamps are in carmine in sheets of 24, with three rows of eight different denominations. Slightly clearer lithographed forgeries were produced by Freidl in France. They are overprinted 'Facsimile' in small letters, 10mm long by 1.55mm high and also incorporate the word 'Faux' in the design. The higher values are different colours, corresponding to the genuine ones. Slightly finer reproductions were made by Kohl and Co, Lichtdrucke, Frankfurt on Main. They were produced by photo-lithography and often bear the overprint 'phototypie', or a circular overprint reading 'Kohl and Co'. The colours are different from Senf and Freidl. These forgers seem to have confined their efforts to the 1875 to 1894 issues, Scott PR9 to PR101, where the top value was $60. Finally, the USPO adopted an 'if you can't beat them, then join them' approach. In 1895 the USPO produced a new set with slightly different face values and top values of $50 and $100. Initially they were on un-watermarked paper perforated 12 (Scott PR102 to PR113). They are scarce and catalogue at $2,500 per mint set. From October 1895 they appeared on paper watermarked double lined USPS (Scott PR114 to PR125). This set only catalogues at $300, less than twice the $190 face value. There is a good reason for this. Most were sold to collectors below face by the USPO in 1899 as remainders. This was after the use of newspaper stamps was discontinued on 1 July 1898. Altogether 27,000 sets of this final issue were sold to collectors. There were insufficient quantities of the high values in stock, so an additional printing was made. These cannot be distinguished from the originals. The sale of the stamps in this way created some outrage at the time, as evidenced by comments in the London and New York philatelic press. So for years, some of the genuine newspaper stamps enjoyed the same status as the 'Seebeck' remainders that so damaged the philatelic status of many Latin American countries. | ||||
| * In 1885 the minimum newspaper rate was reduced from 2c to 1c. | ||||
| Reprinted with permission from The Mayflower, journal of the American Stamp Club of Great Britain | ||||
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