Romania Bulls Head Forgeries

In the last Blog post I showed what I believe is a genuine Bulls Head (of course, I need to get a Certificate and hope to do so). The price of getting this stamp was that I had to buy the forgeries shown above.

The two forgeries of the 54 Parale are not really serious: for example,the "4" in "54" is closed. It should be open. That is like a Big Mistake.

The 81 Parale in the top row is trying harder but when I compare it to the colour illustrations in Heimbüchler, I notice first of all that the ears are quite wrong. Also, the left foot of the "P" of "PORTO" does not have the characteristics decribed by Heimbüchler - the left foot should be sloping away to the left.

The 81 Parale on the "Hamburger" fragment is more interesting. The paper is too blue - it's very pretty - but the design is quite good. I had to study for some time before I could pick out an obvious mistake: in the double oval around the "81", to the right (south east) side, there is a fine line of shading inside the double oval. I cannot see anything like this in Heimbüchler's illustrations. And, once again, the left foot of the "P" of "PORTO" does not slope away to the left

The real failure is perhaps the cancellation. Ignore the weak RECEPISSE. The WASLUI / MOLDOVA 28/8 in pale grey is not a plausible colour - and, I then discover, Heimbüchler actually lists this WASLUI 28/8 as a cancellation which appears on modern (1960s onwards) forgeries (page 217)

Classic Romania: stamps and cancellations

Yesterday I wanted to spend a quiet day at home. So I re-organised my stock of Classic Romania. Maybe not everyone's idea of a quiet day, but there you are ...

Two or three years ago, several large Romania collections came on the market at David Feldman, Corinphila and so on. I bid on the small accumulations which were left once the top items had been pulled out to be offered singly. Because these were very good (Gold medal level) collections, the material in the accumulations was nearly all of excellent quality. I spent a lot of money.

Dr Fritz Heimbüchler, the BPP expert for Romania, was kind enough to look over the bulk of my acquisitions on my Stands at the Briefmarkenmesse in München and then Sindelfingen and pulled out many items to sign or provide certificates for. We binned a handful of forgeries, but the nature of the collections meant that they weren't a major problem.

Re-organised, the material looks better and the stamps for each Michel number easier to compare. I start at Number 6 and stop at Number 34. The stock still runs to hundreds of stamps.