I got an email from a collector who is doing research regarding the sheet numbers on Chassepot issues. He sent me an example scan that you can see here:
Perhaps someone already did some research and can provide information about these numbers? Or if you have sheets or parts of sheets with numbers, please send me a scan – I will put them on the site so we can all learn more about this!
Looking forward to your contributions!
It is nice to see a lot reach almost or even more than the double of its starting price. Even more, when such an exotic field like Armenian stamps is involved. And we are talking about stamps, not even covers. Last but not least, the final figures show, there was some serious money spent.
Five examples: two from Raritan Stamp Auction #56, March 08, 2013 and three from the 177.-180. Corinphila auction.
That one sold for 2200 USD and that is without the buyers 15% premium. If I remember correctly it started a bit below 2000 USD.
That one went from 450 USD to 1800 USD – again without buyers premium. Really nice material and only some forgeries (like the stamps in the upper right corner).
Starting at 1800 CHF it rose til 4400 CHF – and you have to add the buyers premium. Genuine material and detailed descriptions did have the desired effect.
Rising from 400 CHF to 850 CHF – a very solid achievement.
A very interesting collection. You can see the effort put into this. And again this was not lost: starting at 2000 CHF it went to 3800 CHF.
The 15 Gold Kopeck Overprint as quite common, just like the 20 Gold Kopeck from the post before. Still the forgeries are much more difficult to spot. Part of the problem is the dark and well inked background, which hides a lot of detail of the overprint and prevents a good contrast. Another problem is the wide range of variations due to more or less fluid ink, gathered dust on the cancel and the “human factor” – how strong the clerk pressed the cancel device down.
Lets have a look at this overprint. Here is a genuine stamp with a perfect impression of the genuine overprint.
The Overprint in Detail. The shape is perfect and the ink in the most typical fashion.
And another picture of a light variation – the 15 Gold Kopeck overprint with the small upper serif one the digit one. In this case the ink is much thicker and with more pigment.
Now let’s have a look at the most dangerous forgery.
And in detail: Please note the different ink, slightly bluish and kind of weak. The main difference in the shape is the flag of the five. The ball of the five almost (or even does) touch the serif of the one.
Besides from obvious fakes which immediately appear as such when compared to a genuine overprint I found this stamp in my collection.
The overprint in detail. The ink differs from the weak one of type 1, the shape is almost the same. Another variation is the foot of the one. On genuine overprints the left side is larger than the right side, on fakes it is the other way around.
For comparison reasons a set of genuine overprints and below fakes.
Genuine!
Fake!
The 20 Goldkopeck overprint is quite common. Still the forgers did not neglect it and we can discuss the different types of forgeries.
This is a genuine overprint on a genuine basic stamp. Please not the blue signature on top – this is the only case I know that a signature was deliberately placed on top of a stamp. Also a prominent plate error (or fault) can be seen – the thick line starting to the right of the farmer and going up though the hills.
Here is another genuine overprint on a genuine stamp, but the basic stamp shows the quite rare color rose. A nice item from early printing with clear design.
And another genuine overprint on a genuine stamp with a nice cancellation from Karaklis-Erivan a.
Enough of the genuine ones, now come the forgeries, starting with this item. Basis stamp is genuine. The overprint looks wrong and is kind of hollow in appearance.
Next come two examples of the “thick ball” forgery. A lighter imprint and a heavier one. Again both basic stamps are genuine.
This stamp has the notorious signature “UZ” which is almost always the sign of a forgery.
Last type of forgery at first on a genuine stamp and then on a reprint (forged) stamp.
Both stamps are signed like this. I don’t recognize this signature, if you do, please leave a comment.
Now let us have a look at the overprints in detail and discuss the distinct characteristics of each.
The genuine overprint looks like this. You can see the variances in the imprint regarding the ink used and if the device was cleaned or not.
The characteristics of the genuine overprint.
The forgery type 1: Hollow!
Corinphila of Switzerland offers some very interesting lots. They are generally doing a great job offering serious material in a serious way. There are two collections (Lot 2679 and Lot 2680), featuring ruble overprints and Yerevan pictorials respectively, as well as a single lot with the rare small boxed Z overprint (Lot 1767) and last but not least a lot with pre-philatelic letters (Lot 1766).
More Armenian material can be bought at Harmers SA also of Switzerland. No collections here but some old friends say hello again.
The chalk paper proofs. I think that is an interesting lot and the price has already dropped a lot since the initial demand for this kind was satisfied a year ago or so. Still they are offered almost every couple of months at different auction houses and seem to find no buyer at the moment.
This cover too seems unable to find a buyer for some time now. Offered several times on Cherrystone, now in Switzerland. I wonder why. Besides the high starting price – the cancel looks very unclean. It reminds me a bit at the forged cancel cut outs that came from Armenian sellers in the last three years or so. It would be interesting to study this cover in detail…
A well-known lot with the forged 35 overprint. Usually offered on Cherrystone.
This is a so called Serebrakian letter. A nice item made and sent by Serebrakian himself. The starting price seems already quite high here too.
Let’s see if this stuff is finding a buyer. Cheers.
It is no secret that most of the stamps from Armenia offered on eBay and Co. are forgeries. This lot is no exception.
Let’s have a look at the stamps. All overprints are crude forgeries and the rectangular and star fantasy cancels are a well known and safe indicators for faked overprints too. See Tchilinghirian and Ceresa.
The seller offers a scan of the back side too and you can see he is not lying when he says the stamps are signed.
Of course a sign can be applied by everyone. In this case someone made a pencil sign. It has no value whatsoever since we already know all overprints and cancels are fake. Besides, it is not a known signature of an expert. And in case of Armenia there are a lot of signatures (of experts too) and only very few indicate a genuine stamp and overprint.
Interesting (and a bit sad) is to see how a simple pencil sign brings several bidders to offer (and in one case spend) more than 120 USD on material which is worthless fakes. I wrote the seller while the auction was still open and explained that he offers fakes and sent a link to this site so he can see I know what I speak about. I got no reaction.
The seller writes: “Each lot is sold as Genuine unless otherwise described”. Also on his me-site: “I have been collection stamps for 30 years and since 2004 I have been selling stamps on ebay as a business.” A collector for over 30 years and a professional seller should be aware of the fakes situation regarding different collection areas. Each catalog (Michel, Scott etc) has remarks in the sections if forgeries are present.
So my message to the bidders is, either learn about your collection area or rather spent 10 USD for an instant opinion that 123 USD for crap. You are welcome to use this service!
While checking Trevors blog I found an interesting article about combined overprints. As a rule of thumb, combined overprints are more rare as the “simple” ones. Exceptions are special types like the small boxed overprints on low kopeck values. Besides this, I have to agree, that sometimes the final result of two or three times applying an surcharge produces more or less messy results. Still there are interesting things one can find. Sometimes when applying a second surcharge – e.g. ruble type – the clerk took extra care to prevent parts of the cancel to print – leaving only the value digits.
Of course I had to check my collecting regarding the example shown. And lo and behold I found one too:
As you can see, it is another sibling of the off center printed kind. Funny.
While browsing the “3” Kopeck overprint I stumbled over the description of a second genuine type of the 35 K overprint in Rays Forgery Guide.
This is a scan of the front cover.
And here is the passage about the 35 K Overprint.
While often the same type of digits where used for different “sets” of overprints the “3” used here is definitely a different type as the single “3” described in the article from yesterday.
Like Rays said, the basic 35 Kopeck overprint without “back-conversion” to a “3” with the help of a manual script “K” is quite rare. Here an example with an Alexandropol Sh cancellation.
More common is the manually corrected overprint.
As you can see both overprints are quite clear with concise borders and similar ink. The middle bar of the “3” is quite long and the ball-serifs well formed.
Genuine 35 K overprints are quite scarce. The fakes are much more common. Like Ray says: 95%.
Here two examples of fake overprints with different shapes and ink.
Much more interesting is the second type of the genuine (?) overprint. I happen to have a stamp with this overprint too.
To this date I consider(ed) this overprint a forgery. The ink differs from the genuine overprints and the shape differs too. It has the “damage” on the top of the “3”. The serif-balls are smaller etc. I really hope Ray reads this and can tell us why he thinks this overprint is a genuine one.
Perhaps he can say something to this overprint too. Another one, different form the usual faked ones, more like the type shown above.
The ink is even more like the genuine ones. The most noticeable difference to the genuine shape is the middle bar, which is much to short. Since its a clear impression otherwise, we can probably rule out an unclean cancel.
For comparison I put together a collage of all shown overprints. First row: genuine overprints. Second row: doubtful overprints (considered fake until proved otherwise). Last row: fake overprints.
I got some really interesting comments on the “3” post a few days ago. So I decided to check my collection. There are three types of stamps that were overprinted with a single “3” digit.
First there is the “3” on the 3 ruble stamp.
Second, the “3” on the 20.000 ruble stamp.
And last, the “3” on the 500 ruble stamp.
For the first two types of stamps, I checked for genuine cancellations. That is always a very good indication, that the overprint is genuine. A stamp of this kind with genuine cancellation, but no overprint would be a real sensation. No forger would tinker with such a stamp (if he knows at least a little bit about those stamps). Since fake cancellations exist, care must be taken. Another hint could be signatures. But this is complicated too. Only very few of the many signatures that can be found are a reliable indication for a genuine stamp and overprint. Still those exist. The 500 ruble stamp is a different story altogether. Unoverprinted stamps of this type are extremely rare – but the reprints are plentiful. Still, as a rule of thumb, if you have a original printing, the overprint is genuine. There were no stamps of the original printing available to the forgers to play with. You can get faked overprints on the reprints though… As always with Armenian stamps: not easy, but interesting and a bit challenging.
Next I sought for sure forgeries of the overprints. Sometimes the type of stamp is a giveaway -overprints on reprints of the 500 ruble, for instance. Some signatures (e.g. UZ) work too. Sometimes the shape of the overprint is too much away from the genuine one.
Here is a collage with overprints. Each row is another basic stamp. Who detects the fake overprints?
