Stamp Forgeries
Philatelic Terminology
With stamp forgeries, there are a number of terms that
are used interchangeably by many collectors, but the terms actually
refer to very different types of things. The common philatelic terms
are as follows:
Counterfeit (postal forgery) - these counterfeits
were created for a different market than philatelists. Such postage
stamps are usually common definitive postage stamps that are
counterfeited to defraud a particular government's postal service.
Some
postal forgeries are actually quite collectible, and can be many times
more expensive than the actual postage stamp they were originally made
to imitate. Postal stamp forgeries have been around since the beginning
of postage stamps, with counterfeit postage stamps showing up in the
mails, not too long after the issue of the Penny Black. This was the
primary reason that many countries experimented with watermarks, special
papers, soluble inks, secret marks, silk threads, etc., in order to
prevent counterfeiting.
There are also "political postal forgeries", as
well. During World War II, the Axis and Allied governments occasionally
printed imitations of the definitive postage stamps of their enemies,
usually with insulting pictures or slogans on them. They were never
circulated in the actual countries, but they are popular with stamp
collectors today, and some of them are quite valuable.
Forgery - postage stamps produced to defraud
collectors and to defraud stamp-issuing governments. Knowledge is an
important tool in detecting forgeries. A person that can easily spot
stamp forgeries can usually save a lot of money in expertizing fees.
All serious specialists in 19th Century classical material should study
forgeries and have reference copies of them, along with the genuine
stamps, in their collections.
Fake - the alteration of a genuine stamp to make
it appear as something else. Fakes might refer to cancels, overprints,
added or clipped perforations, design alterations, etc.
Fake cancels are a real problem for many postmark collectors, and they can be difficult to detect.
Some
very rare early U.S. coil and imperforate stamps have also been faked,
by trimming the perforations off of an inexpensive sheet-stamp with the
same appearance.
Official Reprints - postage stamps that are no longer valid for postage, but that are produced by governments, to meet a philatelic need.
The
People's Republic of China did this, after supplies of their 1949 first
issues were exhausted, in order to provide the stamps for collectors.
Most of the German States, years after the postage stamps
had become obsolete, made reprints of their first issues, for sale to
collectors. Many of these reprints, or "nachdrucken", in German, are
quite valuable now, and they are collected alongside the original
government issues by specialists. They usually have printing on the
back of them, either "ND" or "Nachdruck", or they have slightly
different characteristics than the original postage stamp issues.
In
1875, the U.S. government made reprints of every postage stamp that had
been issued since 1847, including the then current definitive series.
These were created to provide stamp collectors with mint examples of the
early U.S. postage stamps. They were sold, by mail-order and at face
value by the U.S. Post Office Department. Oddly, not many of the
reprints were sold, so today they are all worth a fortune -- many times
the mint catalog values of the original postage stamp issues!
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