A Comedy of RRRRs

Click on Image to Enlarge 

This is just the first act of the comedy.To see the rest of this enjoyable farce, go to Christoph Gaertner's June sale, Lot 21778

This Is Why We Need a Bundespruefer for Armenia ...

Click on Image to Magnify

My previous Blog was about the welcome appointment of Stefan Berger as BPP Bundespruefer for Armenia. The above cover is an example of why we need him. It's on offer right now from a major auction house who point to the amazing Inverted Overprint at top right of the cover. This overprint has also excited someone else, who - thinking that the envelope is just a piece of scrap paper -  has scribbled "Inverted" in English at top left. Catalogue numbers have also been scribbled and it might be possible to work out which catalogue was being used when and where.

The cover is an old-fashioned fake. The three 100r overprints are fake and the ERIVAN cancel is a well-known fake showing a date 24 1 21 which would be very, very rare for an Armenian letter. This fake cancel was already known to Tchilingirian and Ashford in the 1950s. 

The envelope is old but I hesitate to date the Cyrillic address - the letter is supposed to be going to Tiflis. There is something about the handwriting I don't like but I can't put my finger on it - apart from the fact that the address seems to have been written in two separate attempts in two different inks.

Two things are interesting. The stamp at bottom left does have what looks like a genuine unframed "Z" overprint in violet - not rare - to which the fake 100r has been added. And at the top right there is a pencilled signature at the bottom left corner of the stamp, done Italian style. What I would like to know is whether this is a genuine expert signature applied by someone who did not know what they were doing or whether it is a faked piece of expertising. 

Added: Stefan Berger points out to e that this cover comes with a 1986 Peter Holcombe certificate which , unfortunately, is simply wrong. The pencilled signature is his when compared with that illustrated at www.filatelia.fi 

Armenia: First Yessayan set 1922 - Forged Overprints

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:

Click on Images to Magnify

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