Most forged overprints on First Yessayan stamps are easy to detect: either they are on forged basic stamps or the overprints are very different from the genuine ones. Of course, there is still a good market for these forgeries on ebay and all over the world there are people who have paid fifty dollars for a stamp I would sell them for fifty cents.
But there are also serious forgeries which always use genuine basic stamps and where the overprint handstamps have been made by forgers who have seen the genuine item.For example, there is a good forgery of the "50k" in black on 25 000 Ararat, imperforate in blue, which copies the fact that the overprint is normally centrally placed at the base of the stamp. Here it is:
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And now here is the genuine overprint:
There are numerous differences which you can see if you examine from left to right. Look at the shape of the "0" for example. In addition, and not so clear from my scans, is the fact that the ink is wrong on the forgery: it is a paler blue-black or grey-black. But the genuine overprint is always in a fairly intense black, not diluted.This is the difference I look for first and the left to right examination then confirms it.
And now here is a multiple with the genuine overprint, which will become relevant in a moment:
If you look at the bottom right stamp in this block you will see that because of the way the handstamp has been held on that occasion, the "k" has not printed properly. This is useful to see because here is a single used copy from ALEXANDROPOL 3 2 23 showing the same failure of the "k" to print properly. But by using the mint multiple for reference, we can be sure that this overprint is genuine, as one would expect from the genuine Alexandropol cancel. You can also see how intense is the black ink of the overprint compared to the ink of the cancelllation:
The stamps on this Blog are for sale as one group for 500 €uro
The block of six comes with a Stefan Berger Opinion
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