Beryllium Guy
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What I collect: Worldwide Stamps 1840-1930
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Post by Beryllium Guy on Feb 14, 2019 21:11:19 GMT
Peru: 1857 Pacific Steam Navigation Co. (PSNCo) Issues - Genuine or Fake?It seems that the 19th Century album pages I bought from the dealer in Aix have continued to yield all sorts of interesting items, with some forgeries among them, notably from St. Lucia and St. Vincent so far. Today comes the next set of questionable items in the sequence: the PSNCo issues from Peru. The Scott Catalogue lists two genuine stamps of this type (2013 excerpt below), but with an interesting note afterward that stamps of the same design and denominations were also prepared for the PSNCo, but never put into use. Please see below scans of stamps that I have found in the old album pages. My question, of course, is if anyone can give me any idea if these stamps are genuine or forgeries? Personally, I am betting on Nelson (@falshung ) for the answer to this one, but of course, all are welcome to weigh in....     Note: All of these stamps were scanned in a single 600dpi image, and the separate images shown here were simply cropped from the original, larger image. I have observed that some of the individual stamps appear to be much more distinct than others, but that is how they actually look rather than an artifact of the scanning process or equipment.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2019 0:26:29 GMT
As might be expected, the odds of finding an unused much less a used PSNCo stamp are in the realm of winning a lottery. Based on your images one can deduce the following; The initial test for originals is the blue tinted paper and as they were engraved, the design will generally show through the back from the printing pressure.
The blue probably comes from the Prussian blue ink and will be spotty. Forgeries are basically surface lithographed.
 Genuine #1 Your stamps appear to be the following  A very rough crude forgery from an unknown source  A decent forgery The top serif of the small 1 is tilted up, the base of the large 1 is too thin The dot is too close to the P. It is of course the wrong color. The 4 ring cancel is a typical fake. A poor forgery typical of Spiro with the dot cancel. The dot after the S is much too far.
The right foot of the R is flat.
The ship details are very rough. Note the flag & thick smoke.
 Genuine #2 The most common forgery trait with this value is the ship pointing the wrong way  Another Spiro  A very good forgery from Chauncey L. Young Note the curve in the foot of the 2. The top of the N touches the frame.
The tail of the R is long and pointed |
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Beryllium Guy
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What I collect: Worldwide Stamps 1840-1930
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Post by Beryllium Guy on Feb 15, 2019 9:50:59 GMT
Many thanks for your highly informative post, Nelson (@falshung). So, no lottery-winner for me this time, but truthfully, I wasn't expecting much. Thanks for some superb images of the genuine articles and an excellent review of the forgeries. It appears to me that I may have a mix of some of the cruder ones and a few of the little bit better ones.
These are beautiful classic stamps, and I would love to own one, but unless I do hit the lottery at some point, I doubt that I will ever be able to afford one for my collection.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2019 1:08:41 GMT
Anyone who inherited or purchased an "old collection" probably has some of these.
Seems I have a lot of PSNCo info in my files so.... If you want to find out more about this true classic - here are the traits of the genuine:
 There are 49 chain like 'links' forming the outer frame of the oval 1. Bluish thick wove paper (average 0.0049" - about 0.125mm) 2. The serifs at the back of the P touch the 3rd vertical line of the background, counting from the left. 3. The shadow of the P ends at the 16th line. 4. The dot after the P from its left side to the shadow on its right side is situated between the 12th and 16th lines from the left. The shadow of the dot touches the oval frame line. 5. The curve at the back of the S at the upper part of the stamp touches the 15th line from the right. 6. The shadow at the right of the top part of the S ends between the 5th and 6th lines from the right. 7. The shadow touches the frame. 8. The 3 masts touch the inner oval frame. The rear mast crosses the frame line slightly. 9. These are 6 ropes attaching the fore mast. 10. There are 3 passengers visible. 11. The water lines are smooth and consistently spaced. 12. The shadow inside the C follows the contour. 13. The shadow of the N touches the frame line. Aside from the ship facing right the 2Rls has the same basic features.  A key feature to look for and compare are the letters dots and shadows. 1. Uniform size letters and dots 2. Specific distances from outside frame lines 3. Shadows and whether they connect the letter and dots or to the frame lines |
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Beryllium Guy
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What I collect: Worldwide Stamps 1840-1930
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Post by Beryllium Guy on Feb 14, 2022 23:01:09 GMT
Getting back into stamps following a break by doing some of my usual searches. As such I just found this on Stamp Auction Network. You get this all the time on Ebay and Delcampe but not very often from a recognised stamp dealer. So Jim Forte, whoever you are, you have this hopelessly wrong.  It's a forgery (probably Spiro) and in this condition it is worthless. The fact that the ship is pointing in the wrong direction and it's blue instead of brown-red is a bit of a giveaway  . What it should look like  Quoted post from Whatcha thread to move it to subject-specific thread. michael , for what it's worth, I generally agree with your observation here. Someone should have caught this and realized that the stamp advertised on the website is clearly one of the myriad of forgeries of these issues and isn't going to be worth $50. If you see my posts in the Visit to a Stamp Store thread, I have offered an explanation why this may have happened. I should add though that if you look at the Scott Catalogue note in the first post in this thread, there are reprints in various colors of these stamps that also exist. These are much more affordable than the genuine Sc1 and Sc2, and I am guessing that it is these reprints that account for all the forgeries in colors other than the blue and red, and it may well be that there is a blue reprint of the 2R stamp, but of course, it would have the ship facing in the correct direction! |
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JeffS
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What I collect: Oranges Philately, US Slogan Cancels, Cape of Good Hope Triangulars, and Texas poster stamps and cinderellas
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Post by JeffS on Feb 14, 2022 23:30:12 GMT
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JeffS
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Posts: 2,600
What I collect: Oranges Philately, US Slogan Cancels, Cape of Good Hope Triangulars, and Texas poster stamps and cinderellas
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Post by JeffS on Feb 15, 2022 0:43:12 GMT
BTW, Jim Forte is one of the leading postal history dealers in the US.
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Beryllium Guy
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What I collect: Worldwide Stamps 1840-1930
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Post by Beryllium Guy on Feb 15, 2022 15:20:57 GMT
Other Examples of Genuine Peru PSNCo StampsAfter reconstructing the posts with deleted images in them, I got to thinking that I should start looking to see if there were any genuine examples of these stamps currently for sale anywhere, and in fact, there a couple of nice examples on eBay. I have digitally cropped the images a bit, but overall the scans are pretty nice and show enough detail to see that they do look genuine, at least in my opinion.  Peru, Sc1, 1R Blue on Blued or Bluish Paper  Peru, Sc2, 2R Brown Red on Bluish or Blued Paper In fact, to my eye, these stamps look very similar to the early COGH issues on blued paper, which makes me wonder if perhaps Perkins Bacon printed these, too. I will need to do a bit more research to see if I can find out. The colors really look like the Cape triangles, too, as the 2R looks very much like the Brick Red color of COGH, Sc1 (SG1 and SG3), and the paper looks like the bluing on those Cape triangles, too. The scans for these two stamps from the online listing show the colors quite well, I think. Now I just need to come up with the $3,500 asking price from the eBay seller! 
Edit: I just did some checking, and according to the Siegel Auction site and a couple of others, it looks like Perkins Bacon did design and print these stamps. No wonder I like them so much!
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Post by michael on Feb 15, 2022 17:54:16 GMT
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Beryllium Guy
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Posts: 5,654
What I collect: Worldwide Stamps 1840-1930
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Post by Beryllium Guy on Feb 15, 2022 19:55:17 GMT
Thanks for confirming my eventual finding on the origin of the stamps, michael. I also suspected that the reason that the Forte listing must have attracted your attention in the first place was the link to Perkins Bacon.... which begs the question: do you have one of these in your collection, then? I am hoping that you do, because I would love to see it!  |
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Post by michael on Feb 16, 2022 14:27:40 GMT
Correct again Beryllium Guy  . Unfortunately I don't own either of the two printed for postal use, due to their cost and scarcity. I do however have some of the reprints. These were printed by Perkins Bacon at the request of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and up to the late 1940s had their own numbers in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue.
When the Perkins Bacon archives became available it became clear from the correspondance between the two companies that they weren't printed for postal purposes and they lost their catalogue status.
A beautiful design as can be seen here:
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Beryllium Guy
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What I collect: Worldwide Stamps 1840-1930
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Post by Beryllium Guy on Feb 16, 2022 14:35:52 GMT
That is excellent information, michael, thank you very much indeed. I had not realized that the reprints had regular catalogue numbers at any time. Special thanks for posting the old SG listing, as now I can see which different colors there were. Your comments would seem to corroborate what I had read from another online source that stated that the note in the Scott Catalogue is essentially incorrect when it states that the other colors were prepared but never put into use, as it seems that they were never intended for postal use. In that case, I will ask the next question: do you know the reason why the reprints were created? Was it for collectors or for some other purpose? I am curious about that! Thanks again for an excellent post, and congratulations on the beautiful deep green example you have shown. |
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brightonpete
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Post by brightonpete on Feb 16, 2022 15:10:57 GMT
Just looking in on the 1909 Scott's catalogue, I see mint copies were priced at $15 and $18, but used at $40?
Time to fire up my time machine again!
Peter
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Post by michael on Feb 16, 2022 16:24:55 GMT
Thanks brightonpete , I guess that answers my question if the reprints were ever in the Scott catalogue. Has anyone got a Scott catalogue around 1940 to double check? From the above mentioned peyton document: Beryllium Guy, they were printed for favour, and there were 5 or 6 reprints over 3 years, low numbers like 160, 320 and the most common (as above example) 800, all explained in the American Philatelist article probably better than I can. The correspondanc is interesting. It starts with: Not exactly a philatelic order!!
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. What it should look like
. Unfortunately I don't own either of the two printed for postal use, due to their cost and scarcity.
