SQUARE INCH FORGERIES

Evening Star, Issue 21725, 21 May 1934, Page 11

SQUARE INCH FORGERIES

SUBTLE TRAFFIC IN FAKED STAMPS Forging rare stamps is an amazingly paying occupation for the expert. ' In the long run, it is safer than forging bank notes, for. the faking of a stamp does not carry witli it ten years’ penal servitude (writes Gerald Day, in the Melbourne ‘ Argus’). An enthusiastic stamp collector, with an international reputation, said:—“lf you make stamps your friends, tney will rarely tell you lies.” That was long before rare stamps assumed an almost fabulous value. It is no longer true, because the rogue has come into the business. , . Since the first stamp was printed about ninety years ago, more than 170,000 different varieties have been issued. Two rare stamps side by side on an envelope were sold not long ago for a sum ranging into five figures. These were the Id orange-red and 2d blue Mauritius 1847 issue. Fewer than thirty copies are known to exist. The demand for stamps, from the rarest to the commonest, has increased enormously during recent years. The international brotherhood of stamp collectors has grown to vast proportions. Its ranks include the. King, at least one foreign ruler, peers, notabilities, millionaires, commoners, arid many thousands of poor men. King George’s albums contain the world’s finest collection. His Majesty takes his hobby most seriously. There is not an issue of stamps about which ho does not know. ' Catalogues of all important stamp sales reach Buckingham Palace; journals about stamp collecting number him among their subscribers. If he meets a fellow-collector he at once plunges into stamp lore which is highly technical and bewildering to the uninitiated. INGENIOUS REPAIRS. The forger concentrates on the big prizes, and there is no end to his ingenuity. Consider for a moment the activities of the faker who poses as a “ repairer.” His commercial overtures to (he unwary are plausible. Ho seems to them a philanthropist in his anxiety to repair torn stamps at a small fee. The collector succumbs to his advertisements. With a little persuasion he is made to part with some of his damaged specimens. In this condition' they are worth only a fraction_ of their listed value. The collector is glad to sell them at a trifle above the current rates. By buying these stamps at a small cost and patching them up, the repairer soils them again as perfect specimens, and reaps an enormous profit. Repairs consist of thickening the back, mending the tears, inserting missing pieces, and painting in the missing portions on the new paper, adding margins and corners, and perforating. All these repairs can be done to-day with such incredible skill that often only laboratory tests can reveal them. Most’ of them are done by adding paper in the form of pulp, and subjecting the stamp to great pressure. Then there is the faker who possesses several damaged specimens of a rare stamp, and will cut them and piece them together to form a single perfect result. Tho joins are made with extraordinary skill by rubbing down the overlapping portions so as to form a taper-joint as in joinery. Another trick is to cut out

the centre of certain (stamps and replace them upside down, so as to imitate errors in printing. Penny stamps are passed off as £1 stamps by removing the words “ one penny ” and inserting a higher value, either by cutting a used stamp or by plain forgery. The forger in philately enjoys a rather chequered career, although in the last few years some amazingly clever forgeries have been produced, which have defied all but the most subtle tests. Some .dangerous forgeries of certain early French and Saxony stamps have recently been produced and “fed” to the market in small numbers. Forgeries of the very celebrated rarities naturally. stand a poor chance of escaping the microscopes of the enthusiasts. A surprising class of forgery, however, which is much more dangerous because it is unsuspected, is that of common stamps and sets so cheap that they scarcely seem worth the trouble and expense of forging. Huge quantities of these forgeries are produced every year on the Continent, and sent to dealers all over the world. That is where the schoolboy and the humbler collector suffer. EXPERT DETECTION. An easier and more usual form of forgery is in overprints and surcharges, such as the rare overprinted Baghdad and Bushire stamps. Some of these are so accurately done with the exact shades of ink that they can be detected only by means of a special mechanical apparatus. But the true expert is clearly ahead of the forger in his methods. Examining a suspicious stamp, the expert holds it to the light, and searches for opaque patches, or shiny marks along the edges, where margins might have been added. He next puts the stamp in benzine. In nine cases out of ten, if it has been repaired, the mended portions show up lighter in colour than the remainder, and are more opaque. From this process the expert passes to the very latest scientific apparatus of the philatelist, the quartz lamp. Powerful ultra-violet rays, directed on to the stamp through a special filter, at once detect the repairs. If pen marks have been removed, the ink traces are detected. The microscope and special instruments capable of measuring within a quarer of a millimetre do the rest. The testing apparatus is costly, but the sums of money at stake are often enormous. No one, for instance, can compute the value of the collection owned by Mr Hind, of Utica, United States. He paid £II,OOO for a pair of historic Mauritius stamps. There are other famous collections containing valuable air stamps -and “ flown ” covers carried in the historic flights of Hawker, Sir John Alcock, and the Marquis De Pinedo. If you make stamps your friends, they will sometimes make you a “paper” millionaire.