Expertising Handstamped Overprints

Because they are handstamped, handstamped overprints are infinitely variable: the way the clerk inks the handstamp can vary infinitely (pressure, angle etc) and the way he or she applies it to the stamp can also vary infinitely.

That causes problems for the would-be Expertiser.

My own strategy is to start with the things which are not infinitely variable.

(1) The Handstamp. What is the genuine handstamp made of? Wood, metal or rubber? If you can work this out, you can also work out what a genuine strike of the handstamp is likely to look like. Quite often, forgers will use the wrong material to make their own handstamps - say, rubber instead of wood. And it is then possible to say that something is a Forgery because you can see that it is made from a rubber handstamp not a wooden one. You don't have to look more closely.

(2) The Ink Pad. In general, for any one handstamp only one or a few ink pads will be used by the post office clerk. If they are re-inked, they will be re-inked from a limited supply of bottles. Forgers producing small batches are likely to use just one ink pad and one bottle - and, in many cases, it is immediately recognisable that the ink they have bought from the local shop is just plain WRONG. You don't have to look more closely.

(3) The Basic Stamp. Remarkably often, forgers use the wrong basic stamp - maybe a forgery or a reprint or a later printing of a stamp which was used to make the original overprints. If the overprint can be dated to 1918 and the stamp was not printed in such-and-such a shade until 1920, then you know you a re looking at a forgery if the stamp is the 1920 version.

Starting this way reduces the number of stamps you have to look at closely - most Forgeries can be dismissed at a glance.

The real art needed to assess the few that can't is to find features of the genuine handstamp which tend to show however the clerk inks the handstamp and however he or she applies it. For this purpose, it is really helpful to have a large multiple showing the same overprint. For example only, suppose that the handstamp is the number and value  "100 r". You may find that however much the strikes differ, the gap between the "1" and the "0" and the gap between the "0" and the second "0" remains the same - when you allow for the slight differences between heavily inked and lightly inked strikes. You may also find curious things like this: maybe a tiny part of the second "0" almost never seems to print whatever the way the handstamp is struck. There is clearly some small defect in the handstamp - an area which is a millimetre below the level of the rest of the handstamp and which only fills up and shows when the handstamp is very heavily inked or struck.

And so it goes ... For the "100 r" Armenain Dashnak overprint on Russian stamps, Stefan Berger tells me he uses a 16 Features Test for the most difficult cases....

Moscow to Armenia to the Archives to the Forgers...

I began writing about faked material from Armenia back in the 1990s, after someone sold me a batch of 1922-23 stampless official letters to which genuine stamps had recently been added - and forged cancellations then applied. Nice stampless covers were thus converted into pretty worthless fakes.

Today I was looking through a collection of over 100 RSFSR 1923 "Star" overprint covers and I was reminded of old times.

Here is a single sheet of official correspondence sent from Moscow to Yerevan. On the inside the mimeographed text is dated 2 III 23. On the outside the item is numbered ( you can't see this - I have folded the item)and a PECHAT PAKETOV seal has been applied in violet ink (this you can see).

In the early Soviet period, No..... + Seal no longer seems to guarantee that something is a Free Frank item. In this case, it is being sent outside the borders of the RSFSR to an address in the Transcaucasian Federation, so even if postage was free for this official sitem within the RSFSR it may not have been free to Yerevan. So let's continue:

The weak ERIVAN receiver cancellation is genuine.

The franking is possible but not plausible: combinations of 1922 5th Anniversary stamps and Star overprints can be found but they are unusual (there were just two more in the accumulation I was looking through). The 5 p Star overprint is quite scarce used but very common mint. The 5p Fifth Anniversary is also very common mint. It was the unusual franking which made me look closer.

Look at the MOSCOW despatch cancellation. I don't recall seeing it in this kind of blue-grey before but all things are possible I suppose. However, I went through my accumulation looking for another example of this cancellation. I found two examples and show one applied to a December 1922 philatelic local cover, correctly franked with a 20p / 70 kop stamp. The other one I have is identical in ink and lettering.

The two cancellations are quite different. Much as I would like to have a Moscow to Yerevan item like this, I conclude that the stamps have been added to this document maybe ten or twenty years ago and a fake Moscow cancellation applied. The cancellation is in the wrong ink and the design is only a careless copy.

Armenia: Turning Base Metal into Gold

Click on image and use Magnifier to enlarge.

This is what happens when you buy Armenia without looking carefully!

At a show, I bought a small batch of used First Yessayan stamps. I checked the overprints and the cancellations on the stamps and they all looked OK. So I bought the stamps.

Later, when I looked more closely, I realised that several of the stamps overlapped on pieces, too many for coincidence. In addition, the brown paper on which they were stuck did not look right - it was old but not a type I had seen for 1920s Armenia. Some single stamps on this brown paper also did not look quite right.

So I scanned them all and this immediately showed that in all cases the parts of the cancellations on the brown paper were faked - they were drawn in by hand.

So why would you stick genuine stamps on bits of paper and fake a cancellation? My guess meant that I had to soak the stamps off the paper to find out.

The answer is shown on the right hand illustrations: the overlapping allowed someone to hide damaged stamps. See the top two rows on the right.

Using a paper backing also disguised damage and repair work on the two single stamps at the bottom.

Bottom right, the "3" on 20 000, the stamp was badly thinned and torn but this was hidden by backing it with a piece of sheet margin from some Imperial Russian sheet with lozenges and then putting the stamp onto the brown backing.

The stamp bottom left also revealed some labour-intensive work: at the top you can see that the perforations are not quite aligned. This is because the whole top right corner has been inserted from another stamp to repair damage to the main stamp.

Buyer beware!

Armenian Stamps on Newspapers: doing everyday forensic analysis

Collectors of 1917 - 23 Armenia are aware of newspapers of the time franked with Imperial or Armenianized adhesives. Some are clearly fakes; some are not. How do you go about assessing them especially if you do not have the items in front of you?

Last year, Heinrich Koehler of Wiesbaden offered two Armenian newspapers in its 341 / 342 Auktion. You can find them online as Lots 1598 ( with Imperial stamps and dated 1919) and 1599 (with Armenianized stamps and dated 1920). Both had start prices of 1000 euro - modest when you consider just how rare such things are. One newspaper sold at its starting price; the other one did not sell.

Koehler's beautiful sofware allows you to click on the colour images and get high definition enlargements of the item. This is what I have done and what I want you to do. I will concentrate on Lot 1599, though I note at the outset that whereas Lot 1598 has an address label as well as adhesives, Lot 1599 has only adhesives.

In the case of ERIVAN cancels of this period, I always look first at the serial letter - it is this which forgers have most trouble with. In this case, the serial letter looks well-formed. It is on a stamp with a quarter cancel of 7 20. The other stamp also has a quarter cancel. At this point, a warning bell rings: cancelled to order stamps of this period frequently have quarter cancels.

I looked more closely: the ink on the cancel on one stamp is slightly different to that on the other. Then again: the small gap between the two stamps is not filled with any mark from the canceller - though this could be explained by the fact that the stamps are raised relative to the newspaper. But then again: the alignment is not quite right - look at the top line of the inner bridge above the date slug and the inner circle of the double circle.

And one more point: these stamps are probably not from the same sheet or, at least, small multiple. The centring is slightly different. This is of relatively minor weight since counter clerks of the time may well have operated using a heap of pre-separated stamps: something I also saw in the Yerevan post office when I visited it in 1997. Let's just say I would be happier if they looked as if from the same sheet or multiple.

So my provisional conclusion is this: these are two cancelled to order stamps arranged in such a way to produce half the cancellation required.

But what of the cancellation on the newspaper itself - the bottom half of the cancellation? There are two possibilities: it's genuine or it's faked :)

To establish that the cancellation is genuine you would have to lift the stamps and discover that it continues underneath them: this would then have been a stampless item with a genuine cancel to which adhesives have been added.

To establish that it is a fake would require detailed analysis of ink, form and so on. You would need the item in front of you.

It would still be a good idea to lift the stamps. Why? Just to see if they have any hinge remainders. If they have hinges, there is no need for further discussion.

Had Koehler sent me their catalogue I would not have bought this item. I can too easily see how it might have been faked and there are three things which suggest that it is (the ink difference; the gap; the alignment) and a small thing which is also consistent with that: the two stamps are differently centred..

As for Lot 1598, the 1919 newspaper with Imperial adhesives, the cancellation is very weak and I would not want to judge the item without handling it. But the cancellation is (shall we say) in the right ball park, though it could be a digital forgery. But if I had been forced to buy one of these two items, I would have bought this one. (It was unsold).

Finally, a thought about the context. Armenia in 1919 - 1920 was a country suffering terribly - war, famine, disease everywhere. True, newspapers continued to be published in Yerevan. But the idea that there were postmen about delivering them - that seems unlikely. But if there were deliveries, they were few in number and if any items survived, they must be great rarities. Well worth 1000 euro!

I should say this: I don't blame Koehler.They have provided top-class images which anyone can study and, in addition, the items are expertised.

Postscript: At page 56 (in Part One) of Armenia: Postage Stamps, Fiscal Stamps, Postage Cancels (Yerevan 2003), Christopher Zakiyan warns readers against newspapers with genuine Dashnak overprinted stamps attached and forged cancellations.In the case I am have been looking at, however, the part of the cancellation on the stamps is genuine - the question is whether the stamps were originally on the newspaper.