Brazil: Stamps

Album Weeds – Brazil
1843. Excerpts applicable to 60 Reis.

These stamps have always been rather uncommon, especially the 90 Reis; but the forgeries are to be seen everywhere, and I suppose there are few of my readers who cannot remember having been taken in by them, before arriving at what I call “years of suspicion”. From the comparative scarcity of the genuine, and the many years which have elapsed since they were issued, it might naturally be supposed that there would be many imitations in circulation; but I have only met with seven varieties, though one of them, as I said, is extremely common. I must confess that it is a task of no common difficulty to describe these forgeries in such a manner as to enable the possessor of one solitary specimen to say at once whether it be genuine or forged; for, as the design is nothing but a couple of figures, or rather a figure and a cypher, on an engine-turned ground, there is really nothing to lay hold of. However, I will do my best, and ask my readers to make all due allowances.

Genuine:
Engraved in taille-douce. There are two distinct issues of this set of stamps: the first on thick, yellowish-white paper; and the second on thin, bluish-white paper; both wove. There is a black rectangle, formed of one single line, drawn round each stamp, and touching it in one or more places. There is a white ball in the outline, at the top of the stamp, and a similar one at the bottom of the stamp, each being fairly circular, and measuring about 1 1/4 mm. across. Each side of each ball there are bunches of white leaves, graduated in size, to fit the diminishing border, and arranged 3:3:3:1, in each case, with a pair of white dots, like a colon, separating each bunch from the following one. Immediately inside the border, there is a band of very light-coloured engine-turning (the lightest part of the whole background) showing two long dark dashes, somewhat diamond-shaped and close together, alternately with two long dashes, wide apart, with a black dot between them.

This alternate pattern goes, of course, right round the stamp, as do all the interior patterns now to be described. Inside this light band is a broad dark pattern, composed of tiny, diamond-shaped black dots, formed by the intersection of the white lines of the engine-turning; and these black dots are arranged in alternate large and small diamonds, of 9 and 12 dots, respectively. The division between this and the next section of the pattern is a band showing, alternately, five and four parallel dark dashes, but this band does not look at all like a chain. Inside this comes more of the pattern of diamonds of diamond-shaped dots; then another band of the five and four parallel dark dashes; then some more of the dotted pattern; then a very small oval, the outer outline of which is formed by small dashes and colons alternately, and the inner one an unbroken black line. In the center of all, there is some more of the dotted pattern. It will be understood that only portions of all these various oval patterns can be seen; the rest being hidden by the numerals, except the light-coloured band immediately inside the ornamental frame. There is a very thin black outline following the curves of the thick black shading of the numerals, leaving a very narrow light space between shading and outline.

60 Reis. Genuine:
The top of the figure 6 ends in a curl, which forms an almost perfect white circle. The ornamental white balls, at the top and bottom of the stamp, are rather larger than those on the 30 Reis.

---

There are descriptions of seven different kinds of forgeries available on the website, excerpted from the Album Weeds book.