CHAPTER VIII

FORGERIES, FAKES, AND FANCIES

Early counterfeits and their exposers--The "honest" facsimile--"Album Weeds"--Forgeries classified--Frauds on the British Post Office--Forgeries "paying" postage--The One Rupee, India--Fraudulent alteration of values--The British 10s. and £1 "Anchor"--A too-clever "fake"--Joined pairs--Drastic tests--New South Wales "Views" and "Registered"--The Swiss Cantonals--Government "imitations"--"Bogus" stamps.

Mr. Edward L. Pemberton, whose early writings on Philately will always be regarded as little short of inspired from the marvellous intuition which led him to the precise and the accurate, wrote a booklet on "Forged Stamps, and How to Detect Them" in 1863. Already in the history of this new hobby the forger had been at work catering for collectors; it was, of course, from still earlier times that the unscrupulous had endeavoured to relieve Governments of some portions of their revenues by counterfeiting what is a kind of paper currency. Pemberton was not the first author on this subject, but I turn to him because he was the best of several contemporary writers in this as well as in other directions. Of this superiority he was not entirely unconscious, for in his "Introduction" he says: "We have tested the usefulness of the only English work on the 'Falsification of Postage Stamps,' having gone through it carefully, and after an impartial reading, feel convinced that, from the vagueness of the descriptions, both of the forgeries and genuine stamps, many persons testing stamps from them would select the forgery as genuine, and _vice versâ_."

To satisfy (in some measure) the curiosity of his readers, our early authority gives some particulars of the forgers. The "first and foremost" in the nefarious practice was a Zurich forger, whose productions--Swiss Cantonals, Modena, Romagna, &c.--had the largest circulation in Mr. Pemberton's time. This gentleman (evidently well known to the author) had an agent for the sale of his wares at Basle, the prices of these latter being quoted at "for most of the Swiss 80 cts. each used, or unused 1 franc; for the Orts Post and Poste Locale 50 cts. each; for Modena and Romagna 80 cts."

The dealer who occupied the second position of dishonour in the estimation of this philatelic Sherlock Holmes was a Brussels individual, whose provisional Parma, Modena, Naples, and Spain sold largely and were well executed.

These two appear to have been the leaders of the counterfeiting of their time, "those indeed who have made almost a trade of it"; but there was also a Brunswick dealer who "tried his hand at the Danish essays," and a few forged stamps were supposed to hail from Leipsic.

A couple of years later John Marmaduke Stourton, in a brochure "How to Detect Forged Stamps," gives evidence of a swarm of forgers cropping up in even our own country at Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, and London, in Hamburg and New York, as well as the Swiss and Belgian forgers who still plied their traffic. The Glasgow productions were of the "facsimile" class, and were possibly manufactured with the well-intentioned but unwise endeavour to provide approximately correct coloured facsimiles of stamps which were too scarce to be readily accessible to all collectors. The "facsimile" has no doubt often been produced with the best of intentions by firms of high repute, but the protecting word "facsimile" or "Falsch," or other sign by which the true nature of the copy may be identified, has so often been removed for fraudulent purposes after it has left honest hands that there is no alternative in these days of later and fuller experience to define "facsimile," so far as it relates to Philately, as, in the words of my glossary, "a euphemism for a forgery."

It is, however, to be borne in mind by the student that in the beginning of Philately there was not entirely the same attitude towards the production of legitimate (if any could so be called) or honest facsimiles, and, indeed, a writer in one of the early journals, in proposing the formation of a philatelic society, suggests that one of the duties such an institution could properly fulfil would be the reproduction of choice editions (copies) of rare stamps for limited circulation! Also in the _Stamp Collector's Magazine_, whose proprietors and engravers were as free of just reproach as Cæsar's wife, we find the engraver so pleased with the illustration he has produced for that journal of the Nicaragua stamp of 1862 that he announces:--

"NICARAGUAN STAMP.--Will be ready in a week. A beautiful proof of the Nicaraguan Stamp (equal to the original) will be sent for 13 postage-stamps. Only 75 proofs of this will be taken; each proof will be numbered, and then the block burnt. An early application is really necessary, 25 copies being already sold. Address...."

These "proofs," rarer, no doubt, than the originals, were endorsed editorially, and collectors unable to procure the original stamp were told they "would do well to provide themselves with one of these facsimiles." The astute Mr. Pemberton, however, took a very different view. "Although he tells every one that they are merely facsimiles and not the real stamps, we cannot but help thinking that he is acting wrongly; for less scrupulous dealers than himself will sell them as genuine.... Again, these imitations are by far the best executed of any we have seen. The regularly forged stamps are wretched in comparison with these, and therefore all the more caution will be required to detect them." So he proceeds to a detailed description of the small differences existing between genuine and imitation.

There is no royal road by which the collector can attain to the accurate and ready discrimination between the right and the wrong copies of stamps. Forgeries have multiplied enormously between 1863 and 1911, so that now the standard handbook by the Rev. R. B. Earée is a masterpiece of detail entitled "Album Weeds," occupying two large volumes containing nearly 1,300 pages of text. It would be idle to pretend that even the expert has every description contained therein "at his fingers' ends." Yet the expert is rarely deceived in a stamp, even when he has not access at the time to Mr. Earée's work or other references. I remember an early instruction, the only one that covers the subject, but I forget whence it comes. It was that if you study your stamps an imperceptible sense will come to you that will enable you at once to acclaim the true and to suspect if not denounce the false.

Beyond this I can only advise the reader that, as a complete novice, he would be unwise to purchase costly rarities and valuable stamps from unknown and irresponsible persons. The novice will remain a novice in these matters, unless he acquires some knowledge of the differences (generally readily distinguishable) between a stamp that is from an engraved plate and a forgery that is, say, lithographed or from a wood-cut. It is important to remember also--at least for the new collector--that strange though it may seem to him, stamps really do fetch what they are considered to be worth by collectors and dealers of experience, and that if rare stamps are offered much below the current quotation by individuals supposed to know their true worth, it may often be, and generally is, that the wares they have for sale are either forgeries or carefully mended copies of damaged originals.

There is little danger of the collector being much at the mercy of the forger if his transactions are confined to the reputable dealers, for these latter have done more to purify the honest trade in stamps than can, I think, be said of the dealers in the objects of other forms of collecting. They have expert knowledge on their staff, and access to highly specialised opinions and advice in the various branches of the subject.

Personally, I do not consider the forgery question nearly so serious an obstacle in Philately as in other crafts. Most active stamp-collectors are companionable with other students of the same subject, and there would be little opportunity for an _Affaire Vrain-Lucas_, in which during a period of several years a French autograph collector accumulated 27,000 autographs for about £6,000, mostly forgeries, and all from the same source, or for such a string of incidents as was exposed in the recent china case in Great Britain.

Forgeries of stamps are made either for the purpose of defrauding the Government or else for rifling the pockets of the stamp collector; these may be classed in two groups: (1) where a stamp is a forgery either in its entirety or in some added, as distinguished from "altered," material detail; and (2) where a genuine stamp is so altered as to apparently convert it into some other stamp. The first group are generally covered in the term "forgeries," the second being specially distinguished as "fakes." There is another class dubbed "bogus," or sometimes more elegantly _timbres de fantasie_, which comprises labels which are a pure invention, and never had any genuine existence at all.

The first attack on the Post Office revenue of which there is any record is the subject of a letter from Downing Street, London, dated September 2, 1840, and addressed to the late Sir (then Mr.) Rowland Hill:--"Mr. Smith has just called and informed me that a forgery of the Penny Label was yesterday detected in his office. The letter bearing the forged stamp has been handed over to the Stamp Office to be dealt with by them ... the forged stamp is a wood-cut...." An entry a few days later in Mr. Hill's diary reads:--"At the Stamp Office I saw the forged label. It is a miserable thing and could not possibly deceive any except the most stupid and ignorant."

The above seems to have been an almost isolated attempt to defraud the revenue, but it is interesting as being the earliest known forgery, appearing, as it did, within four months of the issue of the first postage-stamp.

A far more romantic forgery, and one of almost colossal magnitude, was discovered in 1898. About that time, a large quantity of British One Shilling stamps--those of the 1865 type in green, with large uncoloured letters in the corners--came on the market, though, as they had been used on telegram forms, they ought to have been destroyed: probably the guilty parties relied on this official practice, not always honoured in observance, as offering a security against not merely the tracing of the offence but the discovering of the fraud itself.

Anyhow, after a lapse of twenty-six years, it was found that amongst these one shilling stamps there was a large proportion of forgeries (purporting to be from plate 5), all used on July 23, 1872, at the Stock Exchange Telegraph Office, London, E.C. More recent discoveries show that the fraud was continued for over twelve months,[16] and, as an indication of the precautions taken by the forgers, plate 6 (which came into use in March, 1872) was duly imitated, although the change of the small figures was a detail probably never noticed by members of the general public.

According to calculations, based on the average numbers used on several days, the Post Office must have lost about £50 a day during the period mentioned above. Who were the originators and perpetrators of the fraud will probably never be known: possibly a stock-broker's clerk (or a small "syndicate" of those gentlemen), or, more probably, a clerk in the Post Office itself. It was an ingenious fraud, well planned and cleverly carried out at a minimum of risk, and, but for the market for old stamps, it would never have been discovered.

Amongst foreign countries, Spain has been the greatest sufferer from forgery: her numerous, and until recent times almost yearly, issues were mainly necessitated by the circulation of counterfeits, which appeared on letters within a very short time after each new series of stamps had been put on sale.

Some of the old Italian States, particularly Naples and the Neapolitan Provinces, were defrauded of part of their revenue by numerous forgeries of some of their stamps; and in these cases, as in that of Spain, letters survive on which the postage has been entirely, or in part, "paid" by means of counterfeits.

An ingenious fraud on the Indian Post Office was discovered in 1890, through the care with which collectors frequently examine their stamps. The One Rupee, slate, of the 1882-88 issue, very cleverly imitated, was found to be frequently coming to this country on letters from Bombay, and police inquiries, made on the information of a well-known philatelist, led to the detection of the culprit; he, it seems, engraved a facsimile on box-wood, and printed his stamps, one by one, on paper as similar as possible to the genuine, but without watermark; the perforation he effected by placing the printed label between two plates of thin metal each with holes corresponding to the intended perforations, and then, by the aid of a blunt wire, punching out the small circular pieces of paper!

Other instances have been noted, but those given are the best known, and serve as good examples of frauds against Post Offices, so far as forgery of the entire stamp is concerned; but, of recent years, a new kind of fraud has come into vogue--the alteration of a genuine stamp into one of a much higher denomination, affecting British Colonies only.

The possibility of this has resulted from the desire of the authorities to print the majority of colonial stamps, available for postal or fiscal purposes, in two colours--one being distinctive of the particular value, and the other a purple or green, very susceptible to any attempt to remove an obliteration or cancellation, whether by the Post Office or by a member of the public: by the latter, in writing-ink.

The _modus operandi_ is ingenious--a stamp is selected, of which nearly the whole design is, say, in green, the name and (low) value being in some distinctive colour; the original value and name are removed by chemical means, the name and new (high) value being substituted in a colour applicable to the higher denomination--result, if the work be carefully done, a stamp which would deceive not only the ordinary official (who is seldom of real philatelic inclinations) but even, at first glance, the average collector, unless he is on the look-out for such "fakes," which, as a matter of fact, have been made for his delectation also.

As has been remarked, the number of forgeries made to deceive collectors has been immeasurably greater than of those prepared for defrauding the Revenue; and it has been endeavoured to select some of the most daring, and often successful, attempts to palm off a clever forgery as a genuine--generally rare, but sometimes quite common--postage-stamp.

In 1903, taking our own country first, an attempt was made to place on the market unused copies of the rare Ten Shillings and One Pound stamps of 1878-83, printed on Large Anchor paper, and perforated 14: these were almost at once discovered by Mr. Nissen, the same philatelist who first noticed the One Shilling (plate 5) counterfeits used at the Stock Exchange Post Office, to be exceedingly clever forgeries. They were, save for a slight lack of finish in the finer details, practically of design identical with that of the original stamps; the colours were well matched, and, most deceptive of all, the paper and perforation were undoubtedly genuine. This timely discovery nipped the forgers' schemes in the bud, but, some eight years subsequently, the lower of these two forged stamps came again on the market, this time provided with a neat, though fraudulent, postmark.

So far as can be judged from the examination of specimens of this forgery, the paper used was that on which were printed certain "Inland Revenue" stamps--probably the Threepence, which alone was watermarked and perforated as were the two stamps imitated; but possibly other fiscals also were used--the colour being chemically removed, leaving a blank piece of paper, properly and genuinely watermarked and perforated, all ready to receive the fraudulent imitation. An undoubtedly clever, but almost unsuccessful, fraud on collectors; though rumour has it that a well-known philatelist, usually credited with capability to protect himself, was a victim for a substantial sum, as the price of an unused "Pound Anchor"!

A recently attempted fraud--this time of the kind known as a "fake"--has been, it is hoped, successfully exposed. As is well known, especially to collectors of British stamps, the first Twopence Halfpenny stamp, issued in 1875, shows an error of corner-lettering on plate 2: the twelfth and last stamp in the eighth horizontal row should have been lettered "L.H.--H.L." but, through want of care, actually bore the letters "L.H.--F.L." This error, especially in unused condition, is scarce, and the faker has naturally made an effort to supply the deficiency.

Obviously, the easiest way to manufacture this error is to select a stamp from plate 2 with the lettering of "L.F.--F.L." (the last stamp in the _sixth_ row), and alter the first "F" into "H", with hope of probable success because the collector's criticism would naturally (if wrongly) be concentrated on the incorrect letter in the lower left-hand corner. Unfortunately for the "fake," which was very well executed, its creator, wishing no doubt to enhance its value, had left the "error" in pair with the eleventh stamp in the same row: result, a very nice pair from the sixth row, lettered "K.F.--F.K.", "L.H.--F.L.", showing (as a consequence of being in pair) a mistake--"H" for "F" in the upper right-hand corner. This, of course, condemned the error at once, but the example serves to show how very careful one must be, and how necessary it is to examine and consider every circumstance in connection with the particular stamp under observation.

There are two varieties of stamps, differing from the normal through some slip in the process of manufacture--bicoloured stamps, in which the portion printed in one colour is inverted as regards the remainder of the design, caused by carelessness in "feeding" the partly-printed sheet wrong way up into the press, for the second impression completing the design; and pairs of stamps, which, each quite normal if severed, are when _se tenant_ inverted in respect to each other, a condition philatelically termed _tête-bêche_.

The fraudulent manipulator has turned his attention to these, generally scarce and frequently very rare, eccentricities, cutting out from the bicoloured stamp the part printed in one colour and replacing it with great care, but upside down; and, as to the _tête-bêche_ pairs, manufacturing them by means of two single copies, a strong adhesive mixture and heavy pressure.

Sometimes, so well have these frauds been made that nothing short of several hours' _boiling_ has sufficed to dissolve the illegal union of the two pieces of paper--a drastic test, and one somewhat detrimental to the value of such copies as are enabled, by their genuineness, to survive the ordeal. The possible result to, say, a mint imperforate Fourpence, Ceylon, suspected of having recently acquired its otherwise desirable "margins," reminds me of the test given (not advocated) by a famous philatelist for the detection of forgeries of early Cashmere stamps, which were printed in water-colour--"Put them in water; if the colour is 'fast' the stamp is a forgery; if it comes off, leaving a blank piece of paper, the stamp is genuine"!

A famous forgery was put on the market some years ago, the stamp imitated being the One Penny value of the well-known first issue of New South Wales, commonly called "Sydney Views." This stamp was issued in sheets of twenty-five, each repetition of the design being separately engraved on the plate and so giving twenty-five minor varieties; and subsequently the entire plate was re-cut, doubling the number of varieties for the specialist. The forger engraved his fraudulent wares and printed the labels, as were the originals, direct from the plate, in a very good imitation of the ink used in 1850 and on similar paper; and these reproductions, often in pairs, were affixed to old envelopes and cancelled with forged postmarks.

So well executed were these forgeries that suspicions as to their character were not raised until an endeavour was made to ascertain the original positions on the sheet of these desirable (?) specimens: then it was found that the details of design did not tally with those of any of the known varieties, and the career of yet another forgery was brought (somewhat tardily) to an untimely end.

Watermarks in the paper were for many years a stumbling-block to the counterfeiter, and practically all the old and generally poorly lithographed forgeries were on plain paper: nowadays, however, the watermark is imitated by actually thinning the paper where necessary, or by impressing it with a die cut to resemble the design, or by painting the "watermark" on the back with an oily composition which renders the paper slightly transparent, and so apparently thinner.

In a comparatively recent forgery of the Registration stamp of New South Wales sent by a correspondent, the counterfeit was produced by the same process (from line-engraved plates) as the original; the watermark showed very distinctly when the label was placed face down, but was not visible at all when held up to the light: it was a "paint" mark in a very faint tint of the ink used for printing that part of the forgery where it appeared.

Occasionally, but it must be admitted not very often, forgeries are so inscribed. A notable instance is the series of large handsome stamps issued by the United States during 1875-95 for payment of the postage on newspapers, singly or in bulk, and ranging from one cent to the high value of one hundred dollars: on each of these particular counterfeits the word "Falsch" was engraved as part of the design, and "Facsimile" was printed across the central portion of the stamp.

Practically the same course was adopted in the native manufacture of forged sets of the early Japanese stamps, the counterfeits (which were produced by the same process as the originals) being marked in the design with two microscopic characters signifying "facsimile": unfortunately for the honest intention of the forger to give due notice of the spuriousness of his productions, the incriminating letters are so small that a carefully applied postmark is apt to completely hide them.

Some stamps have been very extensively forged: for instance, of the 2½ rappen issued in the Swiss Canton of Basle, in 1845, no less than seventeen distinct counterfeits have been detected. The stamp, of which an embossed dove carrying a letter in its beak is the central part of the design, is tricoloured--pale greenish blue, dull crimson and black--and, in common with most of the other Swiss Cantonals, is becoming rare. Copies have also been faked by thinning down card proofs of the genuine impression and adding gum.

Of the rarest Cantonal stamp, usually known as the "double Geneva," and consisting of two stamps of 5 centimes each, joined at the top by a long label inscribed with the aggregate value of 10 centimes, fifteen (probably more) forgeries are known; and as the entire stamp is priced at £75 unused and £28 used, it is naturally worth the counterfeiter's while to persist in the improvement of his imitations, with little hope, however, of attaining a perfection sufficient to defy discovery.

Individuals, however, are not the only forgers of postage-stamps: Governments, too, in their anxiety to provide so-called "reprints" for sale to dealers and collectors, have not hesitated to supply the necessary dies and plates, replacing those originally used and long since cancelled; and some have sunk so low as to deliberately manufacture counterfeits, and sell them as genuine stamps out of a supposed stock left on hand!

A reprint is an impression from the old original die, plate, or stone, taken after the stamp has become obsolete; but prints from a new die, however faithful a copy it may be, can only be correctly given one name--forgery.

In 1875, the United States Government, desiring to exhibit a complete series of their postage-stamps, and finding that the original dies and plates used for production of the Five and Ten Cents, 1847, were not available, ordered new dies to be cut: impressions from these, though closely approaching the originals, can be distinguished therefrom by certain minute but well-defined differences in the design.

The first issue of Fiji--a series printed from ordinary printers' type at the office of a local newspaper, and known amongst philatelists as the "_Fiji Times_ Express" stamps--has been twice "reprinted" from a special setting-up of similar type; but, as the original printing _forme_ had been "distributed," even a re-setting of the actual type would produce little less than a forgery of a class euphemistically described as "official imitations."

The greatest sinners in this respect were the officials at Jassy, Roumania, who, in response to numerous applications for copies of the four very rare stamps of July, 1858, caused to be made, at different times, no less than three varying types of the 54, 81, and 108 paras--which they sold as genuine. It was only in the late 'seventies that this official fraud was thoroughly exposed.

As I have indicated, it is impossible, within the limits of a single chapter, to do more than touch the fringe of the subject of forgery and "faking," and the dissection of a few skilful imitations would not materially add to the warning which the previous few pages will have conveyed--that the interest taken by the forger in Philately is a purely mercenary one, detrimental to our scientific hobby and damaging to our pockets; the collector must always be on the defensive and on the look-out for pitfalls, not relying too much on a guarantee of genuineness (which only secures reimbursement of money paid) to prevent the admission into his album of a forgery or clever fake.

The prevalence of forgery--and the almost equally reprehensible "reprinting"--should be no insurmountable obstacle to the collector; rather it should be a spur to prick the sides of his intent to intimate study and patient research. By collecting in a thorough and scientific manner, the collector will so impress on his memory the general features of the majority of the world's issues, together with the details of the safeguards afforded by paper, watermark and perforation, that the first glimpse at a forgery or fake will reveal a something which at once rouses suspicion that the particular label is not the legitimate offspring of the Post Office.

The "bogus" stamp, that is, the fraudulent label which has never existed as an original, is not to be feared: standard catalogues of the present day contain a practically accurate list of the designs of all issued stamps, and information as to new issues is so widely disseminated by the philatelic press that the chances of successfully placing a bogus stamp or issue are very small.

There have been frauds of this kind, but they are so few, and their character is so easily ascertained from the perusal of any catalogue deserving of the name, that it will suffice to merely mention two or three countries which have had bogus issues foisted on them.

A place supposed to be named Sedang and said to be ruled by a Frenchman was credited with a set of stamps for its non-existent Post Office; Brunei, in 1895 or thereabouts, was reported to have issued a set of stamps, which eventually turned out to be the private speculation of some European trader; and Cordoba (a province of Argentina) had her two legitimate stamps of 5 and 10 centavos supplemented by four higher values of similar design made for the delectation of collectors.

There are a good many more, including the so-called issues for Clipperton Island, Torres Straits, Principality of Trinidad, Counani (the character of these last named is, I believe, still contested), Spitsbergen; and certain labels purporting to hail from Hayti, Hawaii, German East Africa, and Mozambique.

For the novice it may be well to add that the absence of a variety of a known stamp from the catalogue does not necessarily signify that it must be so rare in that particular form that it is unknown to the cataloguer. It may, of course, be a new discovery, but it is not less likely to be a variety which has been built up by some one interested in beguiling you with a fancy of his own. Forgers have been known to add new denominations to the sets of stamps they have been counterfeiting, that is to say, bearing face values unknown in the genuine series, and sometimes fictitious overprints or surcharges are applied to genuine stamps. The most remarkable instance of the latter I can recall is the "Two Cents" overprint on the 3 cents brown on yellow Sarawak, which even the local authorities had come to believe in as having been applied by an up-country official in need of Two Cents stamps, but which were surcharged in London, where the dies of the surcharge and the very genuine-looking combinations of postmarks were subsequently found during an important _cause celèbre_.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] See _The Postage Stamp_, vi. 153.

IX

FAMOUS COLLECTIONS