“FAKERS” OF STAMPS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19769, 17 February 1927, Page 8

“FAKERS” OF STAMPS

CHEATING THE POST OFFICE. SCHEMES THAT FAILED. Ingenious folk are continually using —or misusing—their brains in thinkng out schemes to cheat the post office. Some time ago it was discovered that letters were going through the post with very fine transparent paper pasted over the stamps. The object, of course, was that tho reccpient could remove tho paper and use the stamps again. A very expensive game for those who played It! Making one apparently gdod stamp out of two used halves is an old trick and easily detected, but one man hit on what he thought to bo .something far better. If a used stamp had only just caught part of the “dater” ho would write the address on the envelope so that the “q”of “esq.,” or the like, ran on to the stamp. Thus the cancelling mark lost itself in the tail of the “q”! Nevertheless, it was hardly worth £5O, the amount of the fine he had to pay. Another man conceived the idea of cutting out the cancelling marks from one stamp —he chose sixpenny, eightpenny and shilling ones, and got his supply by buying parcels post wrappings from, an office cleaner —and, by selections, pasting on tho backs of the cut stamp portions from another. But he was detected and sentenced to prison for three months