Below is an unedited version of an article entitled 'FORGED OVERPRINTS' by Peter Mansfield incorrectly published in our December 07 Journal page 111. It is unknown how this was published incorrectly in the Journal and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

In “Notes & Queries” in the June 2007 issue, the editor discusses forgeries. He reminds us that “Collectors of rare postage stamps have always been plagued by forgeries … The more sophisticated forgeries have in common that they were made to separate rich collectors from their money.” But he goes on to state that “In the revenue world we have mercifully been spared forgeries made to defraud collectors”. This may be so; but apart from the strange case of “APS 15p” overprinted on a Peruvian revenue stamp, he does not consider the question of forged overprints.

These are certainly not unknown to postage collectors. A few years ago, I bought a mint copy of a 1902 QV ½d blue-green overprinted ‘O.W. / OFFICIAL’, valued in the 2004 SG catalogue at £200. I paid £5 for it, because the seller was kind – or honest – enough to inform would-be purchasers that the wholly genuine stamp had a forged overprint, supposedly made in India.

Now a current valuation of £200 is far from vast; but as a return on half an old penny plus a minimal outlay on printing it’s not to be sneezed at. And the nineteenth century has one or two cases of revenue stamps which could offer the overprint-forger similar returns: for example, the exceptionally rare 1880s Foreign Bill series overprinted ‘Paymaster / General’s / Service’. Booth 1990 says of these stamps that they “are extremely rare. ‘SPECIMEN’ examples are known and also several copies date cancelled in manuscript ‘1891’and ‘1892’ (probably from a sample book). I know of no mint examples and have never encountered or heard of any used copies.” (My underlining.) Barefoot 2002 says that “only one SPECIMEN set exists, split between two collectors,” lists the pounds-tier values in brackets – i.e., he doubts their existence – and prices the pence- and shillings-tier stamps at a notional *£250.00 each. Both catalogue-compilers quote Walter Morley’s statement that only 40 of these stamps were issued. And as I discovered later, other early catalogue-compilers were impressed by the rarity and desirability of these stamps. Gilbert & Koehler offered the 1d, 2d, 3d and 1s priced at 20F, the same price in their catalogue as a Matrimonial Cause 2/6 lilac (£250 in Barefoot); Forbin offered the 1d-6d priced at 40F, 9d and 1s at 50F: the same price in his catalogue as a Land Commission £5 1884 (£100 in Barefoot. The Foreign Bill £5 without overprint is valued by Barefoot at £3.50, by the way.) Now these are values worth forging an overprint for, I believe. But note that neither compiler offers any pounds-tier stamp; nor do they offer, or even mention, SPECIMEN copies. And what exactly did the overprint look like?

One of Barefoot’s “two collectors” must have been Marcus Samuel, who possessed four of the possible total of nine (a 6d, a 9d, a £2 and a £5, all overprinted SPECIMEN), which were offered in the Spink 2005 auction at an estimate of £400-500 but were not pictured in the Spink catalogue. I rang Spink to ask for more details; the gentleman I spoke to told me that Spink had made scans for interested bidders, but later destroyed them. The set went for £280 to a private bidder, concerning whom Spink could tell me no more for reasons of client confidentiality.

And why should I be so interested in seeing what Samuels’ copies had looked like? Some months ago Dave Elsmore, our web-site manager, sent me scans of a couple of stamps he’d come across in a “junk lot” which were apparently mint £5 examples of this series, and he asked me for my opinion as to whether they were genuine or not. After examining the scans in detail I came to the conclusion that the stamps were genuine, but in all probability the overprints were hand-stamped, and therefore fake. My yardstick for comparison was the illustration in Barefoot 2002. This has a well-centred overprint in clear, un-smudged, rounded sans serif script, while on Dave’s examples the overprint lettering is poorly centred, of uneven quality, tall and ‘rectangular’ rather than rounded – even though, unlike the Barefoot example, it appears to have an apostrophe between the “L” and the “S” of “GENERAL’S”. I contacted John Barefoot about his illustration, and received the following rather unsettling reply:

“The illustration was prepared in the days before scanners.  I have taken it on trust ever since, but never found a better photo despite various requests at the time of doing the newer editions. Don't reproduce it as "genuine" as it might be an artist's impression!!!”

So it is not surprising that the two overprints are different! But I decided to search further, and eventually found an illustration of one of these stamps in Gilbert & Koehler, copied by Forbin. This resembles the overprint on Dave’s stamps quite uncannily in that the overprint lettering is tall and ‘rectangular’ rather than rounded, and also has an apostrophe between the “L” and the “S” of “GENERAL’S”. But where on Dave’s examples the overprint lettering is poorly centred and of uneven quality, that on the G & K / Forbin illustration is even, somewhat better-centred and definitely appears printed rather than hand-stamped. The doubt raised by the case of the Barefoot illustration refuses to go away, however: was the French illustration also no more than an “artist’s impression”? Was this illustration itself perhaps the “inspiration” for Dave’s examples? And note that all of the three versions illustrated are mint; none is further overprinted SPECIMEN. Hence my approach to Spink.

               Barefoot                                           Dave’s copies                                     G & K / Forbin

John makes a further point: ”Also I'm in two minds whether to "de-list" this issue as it is really only a control cachet, not a denominating imprint (I think)”. Now a “control cachet” could indeed be cruder, less well-centred etc than a “denominating imprint”, so perhaps Dave did lose a bargain when he swapped his copies for something “safer”. In the light of John’s comments, then, we must ask the question: which of the three – or none of them – is genuine? Clive Akerman also has a theory – one among many – that in the case of the SPECIMEN stamps, the overprint, whether fake or genuine hand-stamp, was applied to existing Foreign Bill SPECIMENs, whether for fun in the latter case or profit in the former. This, I think, is as valid a puzzle to occupy the minds of a future Expert Committee as an “APS 15p” on a Peruvian stamp; it could be solved very quickly, however, if some reader who owns one of these stamps – pounds-, shillings- or pence-tier, mint or SPECIMEN – were to send the editor a scan or photocopy; and in the case of an ex-Samuels SPECIMEN, to make it clear which overprint (PMGS or SPECIMEN) came first on the stamp.

Dave also came across the following rather amusing overprint forgeries, though whether they were aimed at the gullible public, the undiscerning collector, or intended as a political joke, is hard to say.

home