The current auction at Raritan again features several Armenia lots. My impression while scanning: interesting items, some quite nice and not often to see, but also at least two lots where I consider the overprints/cancels as fake (the dangerous forgery as Tchilinghirian would call it) and fishy looking respectively. The collection, as so often, is a mix of obviously fake overprints and also nice (and genuine) looking ones.
No cover this time…
Thanks for the post,
For lot #240, it says the basic stamp is a re-issue because of the solid vertical lines, what about the one posted on your Stolow blog post is that what the original issue looks like? (10k overprint on 100r)
The term reissued is probably a bit misleading. A design change of the basic stamp only occurred with the “fish” stamp of this issue. Where we can now distinguish between two versions of this stamp. Printing with stones yield good results during the first printing runs. After that the stone wears “off” and if not cleaned frequently, the stamps produced lacked more and more detail. The basic stamp shown here is probably from the first printing runs.
There are more interesting things in this issued. For instance the two colors of the 500 rubles stamp or the different shade of the early printings of the 250 ruble stamp. Also many color trials of the 20.000 rubles exist, black designer essays, and essays on chalk paper.
To your question: All three basic stamps are genuine. The two from stolow and the one at Raritan.
The overprint is one of the difficult ones. Without a really good high res scan, the stamp itself and comparison material you could not expect to expertise these.
Another thing about the Stolow marks. Stolow was not an expert, but a dealer. So this are dealer marks on the back of the stamps. Raritan calls this Stolow guarantee hs (handsign?), which is at least a little bit over the top, since there is no Stolow dealer operation anymore, which can not be a good sign for a guarantee…
The first forgers produced fake overprints at the same time when the stamps were around to answer the demand of the central-european dealers. Back then some dealer thought they definitely get genuine material when ordering in the issuing country. However, we now know, that that was not the case every time. This way dealer marks (even of the serious dealers) found there way on the back of stamps.
Thank you for that information ^.
Here’s recent purchase of mine, Its print quality resembles the one from the Stolow post so that comment from the Raritan threw me off a bit.
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDUzWDY0MA==/$%28KGrHqN,!n0E63WBWLpLBPDf9qz-%29Q~~60_58.JPG
I originally considered the reprints to be of a Soviet origin since those I purchased many years ago in complete sheets were part of the remainders sold by the Soviets to Mon. Rockling (Maison Romeko) and Mr Bloch (USA) who divided the material between them. Many years later when comparing more thoroughly the reprints, (produced from a fresh set of stones) with other material from the Printer, Essayan of Constantinople I came to the conclusion that the paper and ink used by Essayan contained common features leading to the conclusion that they were from the same source. I can only explain this by the Soviets ordering further printings from Essayan to bolster their stocks before releasing them to the philatelic trade.