[VIII]
FORGERIES,
FAKES, AND
FANCIES
FORGERIES, FAKES, AND FANCIES
Early counterfeits and their exposers—The "honest" facsimile—"Album Weeds"—Forgeries classified—Frauds on the British Post Office—Forgeries "paying" postage—The One Rupee, India—Fraudulent alteration of values—The British 10s. and £1 "Anchor"—A too-clever "fake"—Joined pairs—Drastic tests—New South Wales "Views" and "Registered"—The Swiss Cantonals—Government "imitations"—"Bogus" stamps.
Mr. Edward L. Pemberton, whose early writings on Philately will always be regarded as little short of inspired from the marvellous intuition which led him to the precise and the accurate, wrote a booklet on "Forged Stamps, and How to Detect Them" in 1863. Already in the history of this new hobby the forger had been at work catering for collectors; it was, of course, from still earlier times that the unscrupulous had endeavoured to relieve Governments of some portions of their revenues by counterfeiting what is a kind of paper currency. Pemberton was not the first author on this subject, but I turn to him because he was the best of several contemporary writers in this as well as in other directions. Of this superiority he was not entirely unconscious, for in his "Introduction" he says: "We have tested the usefulness of the only English work on the 'Falsification of Postage Stamps,' having gone through it carefully, and after an impartial reading, feel convinced that, from the vagueness of the descriptions, both of the forgeries and genuine stamps, many persons testing stamps from them would select the forgery as genuine, and vice versâ."
To satisfy (in some measure) the curiosity of his readers, our early authority gives some particulars of the forgers. The "first and foremost" in the nefarious practice was a Zurich forger, whose productions—Swiss Cantonals, Modena, Romagna, &c.—had the largest circulation in Mr. Pemberton's time. This gentleman (evidently well known to the author) had an agent for the sale of his wares at Basle, the prices of these latter being quoted at "for most of the Swiss 80 cts. each used, or unused 1 franc; for the Orts Post and Poste Locale 50 cts. each; for Modena and Romagna 80 cts."
The dealer who occupied the second position of dishonour in the estimation of this philatelic Sherlock Holmes was a Brussels individual, whose provisional Parma, Modena, Naples, and Spain sold largely and were well executed.