THE MODERN FAKE SAINT LUCIA 1985 MILITARY AIRCRAFT STAMP ISSUES

Saint Lucia 1985 Leaders of the World Military Aircraft Forgery Set
Scott# 762-5 Stanley Gibbons# 812-19

Fake Military Aircraft Invert Error Set

UPDATE 2018 WARNING!!!!

It has come to my attention that the Michel Catalog editors were fooled into adding notes in the latest edition of their catalogs that inverts exist of this issue and others. It started with the forger or one of his associates fooling Christian Calves into issuing False Expertising certificates on fake inverts. Here is one for this issue.

I contacted the expert directly and this is his reply.

In english it reads.

Dear Sir,
I am interested in the e-mail you sent us on May 25 about the stamps printed by Format International Security Printers.
I have browsed your site carefully and have been very favorably impressed by the breadth of your research that demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the subject.
They allowed me to read information that I did not have in my possession. Rest assured that I will take them into account, when I will have to appraise stamps printed by this company.
With thanks,
Best regards,
Christian Calves

With this you can see we now have a very huge problem with stamp expertising services. The forger and his cronies will go to great lengths to try to get their fake junk authenticated as if genuine to fool you into buying them.

THEY THEN TOOK IT FARTHER!

I was notified by other experts that the most recently published Michel Catalogs have new notes added that inverts exist of these issues! I immediately contacted the editors of Michel catalog. Here is the response.

If you cannot read the image, this is what it says.

Dear Mr. Lowe,
I am answering only today because your mail reached me after workend of the day before the German day of reunification, our national holiday.
Thank you very much for your information, which was not totally new to us, as we got another warning some months ago. At that time I deleted the footnotes concerning the inverts from our database. Yours sincerely
ppa Oskar Klan

So if there is any doubt remaining that the expertising certificates and/or the notes in Michel Catalog are false in all regards then contact them yourself to get the answer. Sadly these false certificates and newly published catalogs are now on the market causing havoc to dealers and collectors worldwide. Thanks to one person....

The forger who is a wholesale stamp dealer and his cronies are professional cons that will go to the most extreme lengths to get fake material like this to appear genuine. They are a network of dealers around the world and are very powerful entities in the philatelic community. You can see this just by what has happened here.

YOU MUST BE ALERT AND DO EXTENSIVE RESEARCH BEFORE BUYING ANYTHING LIKE THIS!!

END UPDATE 2018 WARNING

I have discovered that modern fake stamps of this issue are being flooded onto the market. I can tell you that real dangerous fakes or some call forgeries are being flooded on the market as I write this page in January of 2016.
All the stamps imaged above are fakes!

UPDATE May 2018

Recently another major seller on eBay was duped into buying a mass of panes of these forgeries. In it were perforated "normal" stamp forgeries and imperforate invert versions. It just keeps getting worse folks until somebody exposes the producer once and for all and ends his forgery career. Until this time:
NO IMPERFORATES OF THIS ISSUE EXISTED EXCEPT ON FORMAT PRESENTATION CARDS.

Saint Lucia Military Aircraft Imperforate Invert Error Forgery stamp Pane Set

END May UPDATE

My research into the printer has enabled me to discover modern fake stamps have been created in 2014!! They are being spread across the world through online auction sites like eBay and Delcampe. Everything about them is fake except for one dangerous fact, they have the correct perf size. The gum type is different in it being white in color and very shiny. This gum type was not used until much later years, long after Format went bankrupt thus proving they were not produced by the Format International Security Printers. Obvious differences will be shown below. So far I have discovered complete sets of forgeries of the Saint Lucia Leaders of the World 1985 Military Aircraft issues as "normal" stamps and as Invert Errors. All are being offered online right now as I write this on January 7, 2016.
Because so many other fakes are now out there I just got to writing the page on these.

I can also tell you that I have discovered that many more "modern" issues for Saint Lucia and other countries are being forged. Mainly varieties and "errors" of the issues which bring in higher profits although normal issues are also being faked in now many cases. All are being produced by the same source which is unknown at present. All are dangerous forgeries because the perf sizes are correct. Images shown on auction sites cannot be trusted because they cannot be defined by counting perforations and unless you have a comparable image of the originals they cannot be recognized by the images given by sellers. This includes the Audubon Birds issues including inverted frames, Dogs inverts, Flowers inverts, Michael Jackson inverts, imperforates and many more.

ANY INFORMATION TO TRACE THE SOURCE OF THESE FORGERIES WILL BE POSTED TO THE PROPER RESOURCES

At present sellers on eBay, Delcampe, Bonanza, and Amazon are offering them. I am sure other sources are now selling them also. A list of these sellers is being compiled and at some point the source may be revealed. At this time unless the sellers stop selling them (which is doubtful) it is up to you as a buyer to refuse to buy them without proper identification. In other words, make the seller send you 1200dpi images of the front and back of the stamps and then compare them with my images. I have posted more pages on the issues I have discovered to be forged and have included an index page listing them with links.

New information is welcome and you may contact me through this website anytime.

I noticed sales of some of the Saint Lucia Leaders of the World Military Aircraft issues as inverts being sold on eBay from dealers based in the United Kingdom months ago. One dealer has since stopped selling the inverts. Several others persist. All persist in offering the fake normal issues. They all are selling thus they are now everywhere in the world! Hundreds and possibly thousands have been moved!

I suspected that they are forgeries because other forgeries I have purchased from these same dealers. I recently purchased a "normal" set and sure enough they are exactly the same as all the other forgeries I have written about. I got them for $6.17 buy it now. This shows us how easily these are being spread across the world. The set imaged at the top of this page is what I got.

This dealer like others is playing dumb and is persisting in selling these and many other forgeries so without naming names because of defamation retaliation and because eBay could retaliate I will have to leave it up to you collectors and dealers to do something about it.
so far I have alerted the APS, American Philatelic Magazine editors, Scott catalog editors about these forgeries. At this point they are tending to ignore it. Are you going to ignore it also?

I now have everything together to present to you how to detect them and not get ripped off!!

Here are gum comparisons.

Gum Comparison of a Fake Stamp with Original and Original Proof
This gum appears to still be PVA but without the greenish tint. It has been noted that other British issues like some of the Machin issues have this type of gum. The problem is it was not used until the late 90's. The gum is very shiny though which conflicts with the description of the gum known as PVAI (Layflat) used on the Machins. Yet the stamps lay perfectly flat on a surface whereas originals have a light bending from aging.
This is evidence showing even a later creation and since these did not appear on the market until 2014 and no such stamps like these have ever been on the market nor recorded, it proves these to be modern forgeries of the stamps.


Screen, Font and Color Comparison of a Fake Stamp with an Original Stamp
Let us use the 5c Messerschmitt 109-E Fighter Plane stamp for high resolution comparisons. I use 1200dpi scans for viewing.
This first comparison shows you how inferior the screens are. I compare the planes wheels.


You can see that the screens used are much coarser. Much of the details are lost on the forgery. The forgeries still are very dangerous because when imaged for sale by sellers they look almost exactly the same as the originals. Buyers will think it is just the sellers scanner making them look "different". To compensate the forger uses a shinier surface on the face of the stamps.

Now let's look at the fonts.


You can see that the fonts are much bolder on the forgery. Note the "dot" pattern on the background of the forgery. None such on originals.

Now let's look at the Front of the fighter on the detail drawing.


Again you can see that much of the detail is gone or indistinct on the forgery.
I ask you....which one would you rather have?
Here you can also see the distinct difference in the crosshatch patterns.

Now I will show reduced images of the original stamps with the forgeries. At the bottom table are links to the same images at full size. To big to fit the page of course as I scanned them all at 1200dpi.

Comparison of the Fake 5c Messerschmitt 109-E Military Aircraft Stamp with the Original Stamp


Now that you know what to look for it helps yes?
Notice the difference in overall colors now?
Green aircraft hanger doors in the background on the original versus dark army green aircraft hanger doors on the fakes.
I note the terrible perforation job on fake 5c value. Almost double perfed. On other fake issues there are double perfed "errors". Intentional or not the stamps are fakes so the "errors" are also fakes. No double perf errors of this issue nor inverts have ever been reported nor found in the past 35 years until these fakes appeared this last year.
Still you can see that most people will not even notice it which is what the forger wants!

Comparison of the Fake 55c Avro 683 Lancaster Mark I Military Aircraft Stamp with the Original Stamp


Do you see the obvious difference? The fake stamps are imperforate between! No such "error" ever existed for this issue.
The ocean water is blue on the originals. It is green on the fakes.

Comparison of the Fake 60c North American P.51-D Mustang Stamp with the Original Stamp


With the 60c value you can see a font difference. The P.51-D.
On the originals it looks like this. P.51-D MUSTANG (with space between D and M).
On the fakes it looks like this. P.51-DMUSTANG (almost no space between the D and M).
The land background is blue-green on originals. It is green on the forgeries.

Comparison of the Fake $2 Supermarine Spitfire Mark II Stamp with the Original Stamp


Here again we have the "error" that did not exist...until now. The fakes are imperforate between.
Again the water on the originals is blue versus the fakes which have green water.

So now you can see that there is a lot of differences between the two printings.

One buyer of these fakes purchased a large lot from one of the biggest and most reputable stamp sellers on eBay. He bought what he thought was the complete print run of one "newly discovered" error in full panes in packets of 200 panes which were unopened.
I am sorry to say that there are several ways proving these were never produced by the Format Printers.
Firstly the packaging is wrong. Here is the image he sent me.


The plastic wrapping is a flexible plastic used today. Format packaged all stamp panes in very brittle hard plastic that tears easily when opened. The separation paper is brown. Format always used pink/red paper to separate and protect the panes and souvenir sheets.

The perforations on the panes are wrong

At this time I could not even find one image of any sets of this issue with selvage attached and do not have any such myself. Then I remembered a good seller on Delcampe that had obtained some of the Bileski stock which included gutter blocks taken from one of the rare (if not unique) press sheets found in the archive. Here is an image of those gutters taken from a genuine press sheet of the Saint Lucia 1985 Military Aircrafts issue.



Now here is an image of the $2 forgery pane.


Now look at the image of the genuine gutters. Then look at the selvage on the stamp forgery pane. Can you see the difference?
The perforations run through the gutters next to the $2 stamp pair proving they ran through the selvage. Compare the pair positioned next to the color guide numbers. There are no perforations on the selvage of the forgery pane on any side.

Because of the fact that a major portion of leaders in the stamp community wish to turn a blind eye on these forgeries. Because of dealers and buyers who are afraid to "step up to the plate" because of fear of being ridiculed by self proclaimed "experts" or because they don't want to get involved, the forgers will continue to forge more and more sets. They have already effected other issues that have nothing to do with Leaders of the World issues such as Nauru 1982 Scouts, Barbuda 1983 Manned Flight and others showing us the wide range of stamps they are capable of forging and possibly have already forged. Soon you will be the victim when you buy that fake high valued Orchid stamp or that high priced definitive set you have dreamed of getting or what you thought to be a genuine error or variety which in the end only turns out to be fabricated by these forgers and nobody wants it when you go to sell it or your children go to sell it.

You have a choice.

Continue to ignore this problem that the majority of stamp leaders and editors seem to be trying to do just like they have with unauthorized reprints and "illegal" stamps in the past. Or spread the word and complain to your contacts and leaders that these problems need to be exposed and described in magazines, newspapers and catalogs before every stamp issue made in modern times from the 1970's onward falls victim to being a suspected forgery and in turn you or your friends or associates will fall victim to it when trying to buy or sell them. These forgers are professionals and have been here for decades unseen. They will continue to harm us unless people like you stand up and take notice!

This problem effects everyone because now instead of the value being based on a set quantity of the issued stamp, we now have double, triple or even more in quantity placed on the market. It will therefore depreciate the stated value of them in the catalogs simply because they will not research them and "assume" there are tons available when in reality for many sets the originals are and have become difficult to find.

I am simply the one who discovered them because of my research on the printer.
Indeed several issues that I have researched and obtained the original varieties of are effected. Mainly these fake imperforates. I am a professional tradesman and have never depended on stamps to live on. There are many that do depend on stamp sales though and it is for them also that I have created this section of the website.

You can now define the Saint Lucia 1985 Military Aircraft forgery stamps easily and can now possibly avoid being ripped off! Sorry to say this, a lot of you already have been fooled and more of you will be until the right people get serious about it!

Here are links to images of each stamp with an original next to a forgery. All are scanned at 1200dpi so the files are large. All were scanned at the same time with the same settings and nothing is enhanced. Using Scott Catalog numbers. Please be patient with downloading them because each file is around 7 to 8 megs.

Your friend and fellow collector and researcher,
JLowe RETURN TO TOP

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