Stamps Expertisation: Past and Present

In the past, dealers and experts guaranteed stamps by signing them on the reverse, sometimes by hand and sometimes with a handstamp. 

This method had a number of disadvantages.

 First, it was unclear what the signature was meant to claim. 

Second, it was open to abuse: you could get an expert to sign a relatively common stamp and then you could later add a rare overprint and point to the signature as a guarantee. To try to stop this abuse, experts sometimes signed twice when given an overprinted stamp - once for the stamp, once for the overprint. 

Third, handstamp ink often penetrated to the front of the stamp, causing an immediate reduction in value. 

Fourth, over time collectors forgot who the experts were especially when they signed with initials or a symbol. 

Fifth, when someone got it wrong, the mark on the back either had to be crossed out or otherwise commented upon. I have several stamps in my stock where an expert has written FAKE or FORGERY or FALSCH and has later changed their mind and crossed it out and signed again. These stamps are not saleable.

Modern photographic, scanning and computer print technology allows a much better way of doing things. At no great cost, an expert can now link a stamp to a printed document and not sign the stamp at all. This is now standard procedure for most experts, including anyone who is a Verbandspruefer of the German Bund Philatelisticher Pruefer e. V. Here’s an example. 

Note how both the back and front of the stamp are photographed, in high resolution, and how the “Attest” format allows for comment and explanation. Even twenty years ago, to produce a document to this standard would have been quite expensive; nowadays, a desktop computer and scanner are all that is needed apart from the security-printed “Attest” formular.

Click on Images to Magnify

Rarities: Making Lists, Inventories and Guesses

In a recent auction there was a Romania Bull’s Head that I wanted to buy. When I saw the auction catalogue illustration, the first thing I did was consult Fritz Heimbüchler’s Die Ochsenköpfe der Moldau / The Bull’s Head of Moldavia  1858 – 1862 (1994; Supplement 2007). I found an illustration of the stamp I was looking for together with a note telling me when and where it last appeared at auction.

There aren’t many books like Heimbüchler’s, which is fully illustrated, hardback and very expensive.

But making lists of “All Known Copies” is one of the things which experts can and should do.

Heimbüchler  was for many years the German BPP expert for Romania and so got to see many Bulls Heads sent to him for expertising. Most of these were already known copies. A few were previously unrecorded. But to make his Inventory I guess he also had to go through hundreds of old auction catalogues and stamp magazines. Making a serious Inventory is the work of many years.

It can be done by Experts working alone but it can also be done by “Study Groups” – but those are perhaps less common than they used to be. It could be done through dedicated Internet sites, with anyone able to contribute but with editorial control to prevent  forgers getting their work listed as genuine.

There are actually very few stamps ( I  leave out postal history for now) for which we know how many exist. There is probably a number above which it is no longer interesting or practicable to Inventory a stamp.

For example, I assume that thousands (many thousands?)  of copies exist of Russia # 1 and it is not really sensible to try to build an Inventory – too many copies are in collections whose owners would never know an Inventory existed. Likewise, it would be hard to inventory Russia # 3 and #4 because so many of these will be unrecognised as such by their owners ( I once bought a stockbook of miscellaneous Russian stamps which contained five or six of them, completely unrecognised by the seller – and by me, until I got the book home! I have no idea by what route they got there).

In contrast, you could probably get somewhere making an Inventory of Russia # 1 in multiples – pairs, strips of three, blocks do not exist in thousands. It would be easy to create a dedicated website and put up the pictures. Forgeries are fairly difficult to make, though you would need scans of both front and back.

I am surprised that there is not a website housing Inventories of rare Zemstvo stamps. When the Fabergé collection was sold in 1999, an opportunity existed then to make Inventories but the chance was missed – at the time of the sale, no one knew how popular and expensive Zemstvos would soon become! The auction catalogue is very useful but is now, of course, out of print.

My real frustration is in the fact that I often handle stamps which I think are as rare as a Moldavia Bull’s Heads but for which absolutely no public inventory exists or even much intelligent guessing. 

For example, among Russian Civil War period stamps 1918 – 1923 there are many that are rare or rare in used condition or rare on cover – but we never really know how rare.

I will give one example. Soviet Armenia in 1922 – 1923 engaged in absolutely zero philatelic speculation; indeed, it imprisoned at least one philatelic speculator (Melik-Pachaev). The various varieties of overprint were produced with no ulterior motivation.

Some are very rare. Take the overprints on First Yessayan (Michel 142 – 166). Some are in red, and these are generally scarcer than the normal black overprints. But though it is relatively easy to find the 1, 2 and 4 overprints in red, mint or used, the same is not true of the 10 or 15 overprints. In twenty years I have handled maybe half a dozen and there is really no way I can go out and buy them – they are unlikely to turn up as single lots in auction, unlike Russia # 1. My guess is that worldwide less than one hundred copies of each could be found today. In contrast, of the 1, 2 and 4 in red I guess that the worldwide supply comfortably exceeds one thousand of each. But these really are guesses. 

But the chances of making a reliable Inventory are very low. And the same is true for many other stamps or stamps on cover. This is why you so often read in auction catalogues phrases like “only a few are believed to exist”. Such phrases come from Experts, collectors and dealers like myself who can only say “Well, in the last twenty years I have seen only … “ And that is as good as it gets.

We Need To Talk About Experts

Collectors and dealers often complain about the shortage of Experts in their specialist fields. I was reminded of the problem when I got my latest copy of Trident-Visnyk which devotes two pages to Experts profiled by the journal Fakes Forgeries Experts over the last dozen years.

Of the five Experts listed, two are dead (Andrew Cronin, Otto Hornung). One is retired - Zbigniew Mikulski has wisely decided to retire with an outstanding reputation for his expertise rather than continue to an age at which he might make mistakes. That leaves two, one of whom acknowledged receipt of some stamps I sent him a couple of years ago and then went silent. That leaves Dr Paul Buchsbayew who is going to be very busy ...

Lots of people have expertise which allows them to evaluate material in their specialist fields - and with a high degree of reliability. But an Expert is someone who claims to be able to evaluate with a very high degree of reliability, such that his or her written Opinions are a good enough guarantee for a buyer who does not know the seller - for example, when the seller is hidden behind an auction catalogue.

How does an Expert know and how does anyone else know that the Expert knows? (That begins to sound like Donald Rumsfeld). Because sometimes Experts don't know but have set themselves up merely to take the money and do as they are asked - sign this! They can continue doing this until people begin to realise that their expensive Opinions are of no more value - and possibly less - than the results of the toss of a coin.

To assess would-be Experts, Germany's BPP (Union of Philatelic Expertisers), asks candidate Experts some very obvious questions, for example, Can we see your collection?

The BPP wants to see stamps and cancellations and it wants to see completeness. This more or less rules out anyone from becoming a BPP Expert for "Russia". No one will have that big a collection. But someone could probably do "Mint stamps of Russia" and under that heading be able to cope with outright forgeries, re-gumming, altered perforations, chemically created shades and so on.

Cancellations pose a big problem - unless you pick a short period and a small area (like Armenia 1917 - 23) there are just too many for anyone to be able to acquire all of them. And yet many forgeries are made by using forged cancellations, either because the used stamp is scarcer than the mint or because it is more valuable on cover.

Common sense and their specialist knowledge allows many collectors and dealers to assess cancellations they haven't seen before. For example, Russian cancellations at any one historical period vary very little in terms of the inks used. Yes, there are black and violet and red - but they are all very similar blacks, violets and reds even in geographically widely separated places. So if you see a cancellation which you haven't seen before AND struck with an ink you haven't seen before, then you worry.

Common sense and a magnifying glass can be supplemented with more powerful equipment which will - for example - detect digital forgeries. Today, a serious would - be Expert will have to acquire such equipment.

But while we are waiting for Experts, there is an awful lot which can be done using the Internet and sharing knowledge. That is one of the things I have been trying to do on this Blog.