Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Poland #1 used cancel 145
Poland #1 mint
Given the flooding of the market with these fakes, I was wondering if there is a distinguishing characteristics to tell them from the originals. I believe these are of modern provenance since they appear in bulk. I take that a large scan would be helpful, but I am restricted to the ebay images which probably intentionally are small or blurry.
Thanks for any guidance you may be able to provide.
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It looks to me like the perforation is wrong.
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The Serrane Guide says that the genuine are on watermarked paper, and the forgeries are not.
The used stamp has a common cancellation, but no word on the watermark.
The mint stamp looks simply bad like a printed copy. I agree with Jan that the perfs are highly suspect. On the zoom, the perfs are simply too clean with no fraying of the paper at the perf tips. Plus, never hinged? Never buy a NH stamp like that without a certificate. The clean perf tips, if the stamp was genuine, are an indicator of the stamp having been regummed and/or reperfed.
Arno, you make a great comment that if the seller isn't willing to guarantee the stamp as being genuine, then buyer beware and presume that it is fake. This is especially so if the seller posts a blurred image of an expensive, rare stamp.
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Thanks Jan-Simon and Michael
I have followed this stamp for a while, and there have been a great many offered in the last weeks (months?). If you check, you will see that all sellers have sold several Poland #1s in the recent past. Looks like all these folks have a pretty deep inventory of that stamp. Certainly, the stamp comes up much more often, and in much superior quality, than one would expect given age, rarity, and price. The numeral cancel is always different, but always SON. Take it all together it is "too good to be true." Add the disclaimer of a guarantee, and you know what is going on: someone in Poland must be printing these by the sheet.
Here is another one:
Poland # 1 used cancel 96
Now, while I am 100% convinced from the totality of the circumstances that all these offerings are fakes, it would be nice to be able to nail it based on some characteristic of the stamps. If there was a difference in watermark or perforation this would be great, because these are about the easiest characteristics to verify.
I checked Scott and Michel; both do not mention a watermark.
Michel says the stamp is comb perforated 11.5 - 12.75. Scott gives the perforation as 11.5 to 12.5.
Arno
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Hmm. You're right. Those catalogs don't mention a watermark. Serrane mentions a wavy line watermark for the genuine stamps. I wonder if the translation was goofed on this, or did the catalogs miss it?
Michel says that there were 2.8 million of these stamps printed. So, it is not rare. Socked-on-the-nose cancels are usually done to cover up deficiencies in the faked stamp. I'll check "Album Weeds" and see what they say about this.
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"Album Weeds" does not have Poland in it. However, there is a section on Russia. Basically they state that the counterfeits of Russia are poor quality lithographs. I would say that all of the examples you have linked to are just that. Early Russian stamps are printed crisp and clear. I would expect Poland #1 to be printed the same as the Russian stamps of the same period.
The text on all three listings is very similar. Could be by the same person selling under three different accounts, or a group selling them.
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Thanks for pointing that out -- yes, the descriptions of all three sellers, located in Oslo, London, and Chicago are suspiciously similar. If you add that one of these seller has opted to suppress transaction details in the feedback, has changed identities, and has also received the following negative feedback on May 7, 2013: "Attention!!! Cautiously Fake!!!!! The seller knows it... Badly..." -- you can infer the whole picture.
All three sellers above have sold multiple copies of Poland #1 both mint and used, all in similar excellent quality using almost identical language over the past few months, starting at a fraction of the actual value of the stamp. I would like to be careful here and will not taint a sellers reputation, but if you think that is odd, I am with you.
As for this being a rare stamp: It is certainly much more rare than suggested by the current offerings. I cannot locate a single offering for this stamp not connected to the distribution ring.
I now also checked my copy of Serrane. Earee or Serrane will likely not be helpful here, because these must be modern forgeries as they appear in bulk. Perhaps you are right and these are lithographed (originals are typographed). I cannot tell from the pictures.
Watermark -- that's an interesting one. Yes, Poland #1 was printed in Russia. The contemporaneous Russian stamps of the 1859-1864 period are noted in Michel (# 5-11) with the same sheet watermark with cyrillic letters and wavy lines (Michel Wm. 4) that was also used for the 1865 issue and later.
Scott describes Russia, Scott # 5 - 18, as unwatermarked and starts the "letters with wavy line watermark" (Scott Wm. 168) with the 1866 Russian stamps.
Both cannot be correct. If we trust Michel better, and assume the earlier Russian stamps also had the watermark, then it is not implausible that the same paper was used for Poland #1, which was also printed in St. Petersburg.
This would reconcile with the information in Serrane, who mentions a wavy line watermark. Michel (and of course Scott as well, but who expects Scott to be correct?) then, would be wrong in not mentioning a watermark for Poland #1. The explanation, perhaps, is the nature of the watermark, which is a sheet watermark, and therefore not all stamps may have portions of the watermark. Of course, I am speculating now.
What we probably need at this point is someone with a Fischer catalog (the benchmark national catalog for Poland), or an original copy of Poland #1, to verify if the stamp has a watermark or not. Perhaps comparing to what is listed in SG or Yvert could be interesting as well.
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Yes, and if Scott is wrong, contacting Scott to get it fixed to help others avoid forgeries without the watermark.
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Yvert does not mention a watermark for Poland #1.
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Thanks, Jan-Simon!
Well, so far the only source mentioning that Poland #1 has a watermark is Serrane.
Michel, Scott, and Yvert don't mention a watermark. I was only surmising that it is possible that the stamp may have a watermark, because Russian stamps printed at the same time do have a watermark resembling the wavy line watermark Serrane mentions.
And even if original Poland #1s do have a watermark, we still don't know if the suspected fakes don't, or if there also exists some attempt at faking a watermark.
So there are still a lot of questions. In any event, even if we cannot solve the puzzle, at least others are warned now about an unusual quantity of high quality Poland #1s currently appearing in the philatelic market.
A future problem is that questionable sellers are easier to spot on ebay than at a stamp show. Here the details of the offer, no guarantee, wording, similar offers etc., all indicate "stay away." Once these stamps enter general collections, and yet later into the stamp market again through regular dealers, one will not be protected by that uneasy gut feeling that accompanies these questionable ebay offers.
Arno
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Is it possible to report all this information to eBay or will eBay not do anything about it? I don't know much about eBay, but it seems to me that allowing forgeries to be sold as the real thing is wrong.
Sally
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It is difficult to get eBay to take action on a seller. In this case, I doubt that they'd do anything since the seller(s) state in the listing that they can't guarantee its authenticity so are selling it as a counterfeit. A buyer can't say the item description was incorrect.
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11:51:29am
Any time I see a seller say they aren't knowledgeable as to a stamps genuineness I just skip along to another seller.
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The Fischer catalogue does not mention a watermark on these stamps. They were printed in the Warsaw Fabryki Stempla by two colour typographical process. They have harrow perforations, 11½ - 12¾ and are irregular. The paper is either white or yellowish woodfree.
As they were printed in Warsaw it is possible that the paper used was different from that used to print Russian stamps.
I wouldd think that the easiest way to pick the fakes out would be by the perforations as it would be extremely difficult to replicate them.
For more information on these types of perforations follow the attached link: http://www.austrianphilately.com/perfs/
In my opinion any seller not willing to send a better picture to the one shown on ebay is selling a fake!
Hope this helpful.
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Yes. That is helpful. So we can conclude that Serrane is wrong in mentioning a watermark.
Unfortunately, the situation has only gotten worse and you can buy these now in bulk:
Four for the price of one I
Four for the price of one II
Or as attractive gutter pairs
MNH pair
Perforation looks harrow to me.
Arno
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Arno, I guess next they'll be selling full sheets of this "rare" stamp.
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I've got myself into gear and finished compiling a summary of cancellations for Poland Scott # 1. This is the first stamp issued in the Kingdom of Poland 1860. I hope people will find it useful. It can be found at the following link:
http://sdrv.ms/GH0aXZ
(Modified by Moderator on 2013-10-06 15:33:37)
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03:34:48pm
Impressive, Kazimierz!
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Thanks Bobby, it's nice to be appreciated. It could be better as my Polish is very limited and Polish syntax does not translate well into English. If there is anyone out there who is fairly fluent I would be quite happy to send them the Polish originals.
There is another file on that link with an International Philatelic Glossary. It has five files, the title of each file is the lead language, English, French, German, Italian & Spanish.
I am also compiling a Catalogue of Red Cross thematics which should be completed soon. Then I will put in the pictures and put it up on line. It is huge, far bigger than I thought it was going to be.
What fun, my wife thinks I'm barking!
Regards
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Hello Kazimierz,
That's some great reference material, but a little awkward to get too, unfortunately. If you would like, I am sure it could be made accessible through our article platform as one complete document and without loading time.
Do you have an opinion on all these Poland #1 stamps appearing on ebay recently, which caused me to start this topic? I believe we all (?) assume that these are forgeries, but really have not heard a definite verification yet. We are also still at a loss if there is a good way of identifying these fakes.
Do you have any additional insights?
Arno
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Hi Arno,
I was having a look at those #1s posted on Ebay. I don't think they are all genuine, I could be wrong as I am not an expert. But I did blow the pictures up and measured them. They are not all the same size. I also think that some of the perforations are decidedly suspect. The cancellations are easy to fake but the perforations are quite distinct and difficult to get right. Harrowing gives a nice clean perforation with each corner exactly the same. Too many of these corners were in-exact and variable.
What is the platform you are talking about? The Cancellations file is set out as five separate files because the page formatting is different on each file and it was the easiest way to do it.
Regards
Kazimierz
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Hello Kazimierz,
Our article section is available here.
I am not sure exactly how to submit articles for inclusion, nor if the fact that some pages have different formatting than other will cause a problem. Perhaps some other members knows, and can get in touch with you?
The information you put together is formidable, and probably will get more exposure if put up there.
As for the Poland #1's sold by this certain group of sellers: there appears to be an unlimited supply, and all in very uniformly pristine condition. I don't think any of them are real. Certainly they are sold as forgeries, and I have never heard that something offered as fake actually was real.
Arno
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If I can load the article as a pdf file it will be easy, I will have to bind the present five pdf files into one which seems do-able with a piece of freeware from Google.
I suppose I should put a copyright on the article as well.
I will give it a go tomorrow if I have time.
Thanks for the heads up.
Regards
Kazimierz
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There are a good number of Poland #1s offered on ebay all "without guarantee." In other words: the stamp is guaranteed to be fake. These are offered from various sellers, mint, used (with beautiful cancels, usually), and on piece. Two examples:
Poland #1 used cancel 145
Poland #1 mint
Given the flooding of the market with these fakes, I was wondering if there is a distinguishing characteristics to tell them from the originals. I believe these are of modern provenance since they appear in bulk. I take that a large scan would be helpful, but I am restricted to the ebay images which probably intentionally are small or blurry.
Thanks for any guidance you may be able to provide.
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Approvals
re: Poland #1 forgeries
It looks to me like the perforation is wrong.
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09:13:38pm
re: Poland #1 forgeries
The Serrane Guide says that the genuine are on watermarked paper, and the forgeries are not.
The used stamp has a common cancellation, but no word on the watermark.
The mint stamp looks simply bad like a printed copy. I agree with Jan that the perfs are highly suspect. On the zoom, the perfs are simply too clean with no fraying of the paper at the perf tips. Plus, never hinged? Never buy a NH stamp like that without a certificate. The clean perf tips, if the stamp was genuine, are an indicator of the stamp having been regummed and/or reperfed.
Arno, you make a great comment that if the seller isn't willing to guarantee the stamp as being genuine, then buyer beware and presume that it is fake. This is especially so if the seller posts a blurred image of an expensive, rare stamp.
Login to Like
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Thanks Jan-Simon and Michael
I have followed this stamp for a while, and there have been a great many offered in the last weeks (months?). If you check, you will see that all sellers have sold several Poland #1s in the recent past. Looks like all these folks have a pretty deep inventory of that stamp. Certainly, the stamp comes up much more often, and in much superior quality, than one would expect given age, rarity, and price. The numeral cancel is always different, but always SON. Take it all together it is "too good to be true." Add the disclaimer of a guarantee, and you know what is going on: someone in Poland must be printing these by the sheet.
Here is another one:
Poland # 1 used cancel 96
Now, while I am 100% convinced from the totality of the circumstances that all these offerings are fakes, it would be nice to be able to nail it based on some characteristic of the stamps. If there was a difference in watermark or perforation this would be great, because these are about the easiest characteristics to verify.
I checked Scott and Michel; both do not mention a watermark.
Michel says the stamp is comb perforated 11.5 - 12.75. Scott gives the perforation as 11.5 to 12.5.
Arno
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04:19:00am
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Hmm. You're right. Those catalogs don't mention a watermark. Serrane mentions a wavy line watermark for the genuine stamps. I wonder if the translation was goofed on this, or did the catalogs miss it?
Michel says that there were 2.8 million of these stamps printed. So, it is not rare. Socked-on-the-nose cancels are usually done to cover up deficiencies in the faked stamp. I'll check "Album Weeds" and see what they say about this.
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04:28:46am
re: Poland #1 forgeries
"Album Weeds" does not have Poland in it. However, there is a section on Russia. Basically they state that the counterfeits of Russia are poor quality lithographs. I would say that all of the examples you have linked to are just that. Early Russian stamps are printed crisp and clear. I would expect Poland #1 to be printed the same as the Russian stamps of the same period.
The text on all three listings is very similar. Could be by the same person selling under three different accounts, or a group selling them.
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Thanks for pointing that out -- yes, the descriptions of all three sellers, located in Oslo, London, and Chicago are suspiciously similar. If you add that one of these seller has opted to suppress transaction details in the feedback, has changed identities, and has also received the following negative feedback on May 7, 2013: "Attention!!! Cautiously Fake!!!!! The seller knows it... Badly..." -- you can infer the whole picture.
All three sellers above have sold multiple copies of Poland #1 both mint and used, all in similar excellent quality using almost identical language over the past few months, starting at a fraction of the actual value of the stamp. I would like to be careful here and will not taint a sellers reputation, but if you think that is odd, I am with you.
As for this being a rare stamp: It is certainly much more rare than suggested by the current offerings. I cannot locate a single offering for this stamp not connected to the distribution ring.
I now also checked my copy of Serrane. Earee or Serrane will likely not be helpful here, because these must be modern forgeries as they appear in bulk. Perhaps you are right and these are lithographed (originals are typographed). I cannot tell from the pictures.
Watermark -- that's an interesting one. Yes, Poland #1 was printed in Russia. The contemporaneous Russian stamps of the 1859-1864 period are noted in Michel (# 5-11) with the same sheet watermark with cyrillic letters and wavy lines (Michel Wm. 4) that was also used for the 1865 issue and later.
Scott describes Russia, Scott # 5 - 18, as unwatermarked and starts the "letters with wavy line watermark" (Scott Wm. 168) with the 1866 Russian stamps.
Both cannot be correct. If we trust Michel better, and assume the earlier Russian stamps also had the watermark, then it is not implausible that the same paper was used for Poland #1, which was also printed in St. Petersburg.
This would reconcile with the information in Serrane, who mentions a wavy line watermark. Michel (and of course Scott as well, but who expects Scott to be correct?) then, would be wrong in not mentioning a watermark for Poland #1. The explanation, perhaps, is the nature of the watermark, which is a sheet watermark, and therefore not all stamps may have portions of the watermark. Of course, I am speculating now.
What we probably need at this point is someone with a Fischer catalog (the benchmark national catalog for Poland), or an original copy of Poland #1, to verify if the stamp has a watermark or not. Perhaps comparing to what is listed in SG or Yvert could be interesting as well.
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03:58:08pm
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Yes, and if Scott is wrong, contacting Scott to get it fixed to help others avoid forgeries without the watermark.
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Approvals
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Yvert does not mention a watermark for Poland #1.
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Thanks, Jan-Simon!
Well, so far the only source mentioning that Poland #1 has a watermark is Serrane.
Michel, Scott, and Yvert don't mention a watermark. I was only surmising that it is possible that the stamp may have a watermark, because Russian stamps printed at the same time do have a watermark resembling the wavy line watermark Serrane mentions.
And even if original Poland #1s do have a watermark, we still don't know if the suspected fakes don't, or if there also exists some attempt at faking a watermark.
So there are still a lot of questions. In any event, even if we cannot solve the puzzle, at least others are warned now about an unusual quantity of high quality Poland #1s currently appearing in the philatelic market.
A future problem is that questionable sellers are easier to spot on ebay than at a stamp show. Here the details of the offer, no guarantee, wording, similar offers etc., all indicate "stay away." Once these stamps enter general collections, and yet later into the stamp market again through regular dealers, one will not be protected by that uneasy gut feeling that accompanies these questionable ebay offers.
Arno
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Is it possible to report all this information to eBay or will eBay not do anything about it? I don't know much about eBay, but it seems to me that allowing forgeries to be sold as the real thing is wrong.
Sally
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09:18:21am
re: Poland #1 forgeries
It is difficult to get eBay to take action on a seller. In this case, I doubt that they'd do anything since the seller(s) state in the listing that they can't guarantee its authenticity so are selling it as a counterfeit. A buyer can't say the item description was incorrect.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
06 Sep 2013
11:51:29am
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Any time I see a seller say they aren't knowledgeable as to a stamps genuineness I just skip along to another seller.
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
The Fischer catalogue does not mention a watermark on these stamps. They were printed in the Warsaw Fabryki Stempla by two colour typographical process. They have harrow perforations, 11½ - 12¾ and are irregular. The paper is either white or yellowish woodfree.
As they were printed in Warsaw it is possible that the paper used was different from that used to print Russian stamps.
I wouldd think that the easiest way to pick the fakes out would be by the perforations as it would be extremely difficult to replicate them.
For more information on these types of perforations follow the attached link: http://www.austrianphilately.com/perfs/
In my opinion any seller not willing to send a better picture to the one shown on ebay is selling a fake!
Hope this helpful.
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Yes. That is helpful. So we can conclude that Serrane is wrong in mentioning a watermark.
Unfortunately, the situation has only gotten worse and you can buy these now in bulk:
Four for the price of one I
Four for the price of one II
Or as attractive gutter pairs
MNH pair
Perforation looks harrow to me.
Arno
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07:59:52pm
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Arno, I guess next they'll be selling full sheets of this "rare" stamp.
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
I've got myself into gear and finished compiling a summary of cancellations for Poland Scott # 1. This is the first stamp issued in the Kingdom of Poland 1860. I hope people will find it useful. It can be found at the following link:
http://sdrv.ms/GH0aXZ
(Modified by Moderator on 2013-10-06 15:33:37)
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
06 Oct 2013
03:34:48pm
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Impressive, Kazimierz!
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Thanks Bobby, it's nice to be appreciated. It could be better as my Polish is very limited and Polish syntax does not translate well into English. If there is anyone out there who is fairly fluent I would be quite happy to send them the Polish originals.
There is another file on that link with an International Philatelic Glossary. It has five files, the title of each file is the lead language, English, French, German, Italian & Spanish.
I am also compiling a Catalogue of Red Cross thematics which should be completed soon. Then I will put in the pictures and put it up on line. It is huge, far bigger than I thought it was going to be.
What fun, my wife thinks I'm barking!
Regards
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re: Poland #1 forgeries
Hello Kazimierz,
That's some great reference material, but a little awkward to get too, unfortunately. If you would like, I am sure it could be made accessible through our article platform as one complete document and without loading time.
Do you have an opinion on all these Poland #1 stamps appearing on ebay recently, which caused me to start this topic? I believe we all (?) assume that these are forgeries, but really have not heard a definite verification yet. We are also still at a loss if there is a good way of identifying these fakes.
Do you have any additional insights?
Arno
Login to Like
this post
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Hi Arno,
I was having a look at those #1s posted on Ebay. I don't think they are all genuine, I could be wrong as I am not an expert. But I did blow the pictures up and measured them. They are not all the same size. I also think that some of the perforations are decidedly suspect. The cancellations are easy to fake but the perforations are quite distinct and difficult to get right. Harrowing gives a nice clean perforation with each corner exactly the same. Too many of these corners were in-exact and variable.
What is the platform you are talking about? The Cancellations file is set out as five separate files because the page formatting is different on each file and it was the easiest way to do it.
Regards
Kazimierz
Login to Like
this post
re: Poland #1 forgeries
Hello Kazimierz,
Our article section is available here.
I am not sure exactly how to submit articles for inclusion, nor if the fact that some pages have different formatting than other will cause a problem. Perhaps some other members knows, and can get in touch with you?
The information you put together is formidable, and probably will get more exposure if put up there.
As for the Poland #1's sold by this certain group of sellers: there appears to be an unlimited supply, and all in very uniformly pristine condition. I don't think any of them are real. Certainly they are sold as forgeries, and I have never heard that something offered as fake actually was real.
Arno
Login to Like
this post
re: Poland #1 forgeries
If I can load the article as a pdf file it will be easy, I will have to bind the present five pdf files into one which seems do-able with a piece of freeware from Google.
I suppose I should put a copyright on the article as well.
I will give it a go tomorrow if I have time.
Thanks for the heads up.
Regards
Kazimierz
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