AirmailEd
Member 
Posts: 174 
What I collect: Worldwide airmail stamps through 1940, unused
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Post by AirmailEd on Sept 25, 2016 23:57:43 GMT
A person from Denmark has developed a stamp forgeries site. According to the post on Stampboards, the site includes 5,073 forgeries. This looks like a Herculean effort. Unfortunately, the site does not say what details make the stamps forgeries. Falschung does a great job of pointing out the various details of forgeries. Without that information, forgeries are difficult to spot. Of course, developing that information for 5,073 stamps (and adding) would be very difficult. The site often does not have genuine stamps for comparison. Probably, that's because the genuine copies cost an arm and a leg. I don't mean to carp. Obviously, it took a lot of work to get 5,073 forgeries onto the site. Perhaps other experts could offer assistance. At any rate, the site is worth viewing. In addition, Stampboards has a discussion of the site. |
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tomiseksj
Moderator 
Woodbridge, Virginia, USA
Posts: 6,269
What I collect: Worldwide stamps/covers, Cinderellas, Ohio Prepaid Sales Tax Receipts, U.S. WWII Ration ephemera
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Post by tomiseksj on Sept 26, 2016 12:03:10 GMT
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Post by jkjblue on Sept 26, 2016 13:29:02 GMT
I think they both offer a lot, but in different ways. Indeed he does! I cannot think of anyone who does a more thorough evaluation. He is the modern day Varro E. Tyler.  Classicalstamps harvests forgery images from various sources to develop an internet repository. His images and information are only as good as his sources, but with over 5,000 images it is helpful indeed. |
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Post by classicalstamps on Sept 26, 2016 14:25:49 GMT
AirmailEd, there are several reasons for this. 1. Images of certified genuine can sometimes be very hard to find. Unless I know the supposedly genuine comes with a certificate or from a very trustworthy source, I don't include it. Labelling forgeries as genuine is to be avoided at all cost. 2. Resources. I can add an image of a forgery in a couple of minutes. Researching and writing comprehensive texts can take hours. I work fulltime and has to balance this to family etc. There are days when all I have time for is a quick image or two. There is so much material that several people could work fulltime for years on this. At the current 'rate' 1000-2000 images will be added per year, in addition to the work done mentioned below. 3. I do not agree that forgeries are difficult to spot without descriptive text. Some, perhaps, but many don't stand a chance when compared to a genuine side-by-side. 4. I could just copy "genuine/forgery descriptions" from old literature, but have chosen not to. There are simply too many errors. Instead, I work with various 'experts', where they volunteer their time/expertise. An example of this is German States, where we are working on Hamburg at the moment. We take all old forgery literature available (a lot of errors/inconsistencies) and correlate to known certified stamps. Works of Bohne/GPS, Serraine, Eareé, Oppitz, Billig, Schloss, Bynof-Smith etc. - it is actually a lot of work. (for example, images of 11 different certified 3 Schilling's were used for the page below) See other examples of yet to be published pages below. 5. So, some people are actually contributing  In the future, I hope more contributors/experts will volunteer, so all countries will eventually be covered with quality content like the pages below. My vision is to have the best information publicly available for all countries. In the meantime you have to sometimes suffice with 'just' images of forgeries (sometime compared to genuine for comparison).  Another page in the works:  Just released:  Just released, part of 150 images online for Tibet - the most comprehensive available anywhere:  |
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Post by classicalstamps on Sept 28, 2016 14:19:46 GMT
Unfortunately, the site does not say what details make the stamps forgeries. The site often does not have genuine stamps for comparison. Probably, that's because the genuine copies cost an arm and a leg. As a sidenote, I've changed my 'about' page to reflect some of the misunderstandings raised in this thread. |
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