PHILATELIC FORGERIES Articles | Stamps

By: Darren Williger

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, and 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.