THE MODERN FAKE SAINT VINCENT 1984 SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES STAMP ISSUES

Saint Vincent 1984 Leaders of the World Summer Olympic Games Forgery Set
Scott# 765-768 Stanley Gibbons# 812-819

Saint Vincent 1984 Leaders of the World Summer Olympic Games Imperforate Forgery Set

Saint Vincent 1984 Leaders of the World Summer Olympic Games Inverted Frame Error Forgery Set

I have found documented proof dated October 2015 that thousands of imperforate forgery sets and inverts are being attempted to be moved onto the market!
H.R. Harmer Auction 3005 Lot# 2001 documents that 100 sets of St. Vincent and 100 sets of St. Lucia fake imperforate inverts were sold for $400.00! These have already made it through and are now on eBay, Delcampe, Amazon and other places!

Saint Vincent 1984 Leaders of the World Summer Olympic Games Imperforate Inverted Frame Error Forgery Set

UPDATE August 2017

Recently I acquired perforated and imperforate sets of forgeries of this issue. I have placed new images of them above. The sale of these forgeries continues with no end in sight. Every variety of this issue is now suspect of being forgeries.

END OF UPDATE

I have recently 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 November of 2015.
All the stamps imaged above are fakes!

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 Vincent Leaders of the World 1984 Olympic Games issues as perforated and imperforate invert errors. Because the invert errors exist it is certain that the normal issue have also been forged. All are being offered online right now as I write this on November 8, 2015.

I can also tell you that I have discovered that many more "modern" issues for Saint Vincent 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 the Saint Vincent Leaders of the World Summer Olympic Games issues as inverts being sold on eBay and other places months ago. Dealers from the UK to Israel were and are selling them as I write this. The asking prices range from $20-40.00 a set! They have been sold to numerous buyers.

I knew that they are forgeries because other forgeries I have purchased from these dealers already. So I recently purchased a perforated set from a dealer in Israel with user name thematicstamps2014 selling them on Delcampe and sure enough they are exactly the same as all the other forgeries I have written about. I got them for $24.99 fixed price. The imaged set at the top of the page is what I got.

I purchased the imperforates from armi777 who is based in Latvia and is connected with asrm10 and balticamber2011 and raimissss.
I purchased the perforated set recently from a Canadian dealer who did not even know they were forgeries.
Aside from the Canadian dealer these other dealers persist in selling these and many other forgeries to this day!

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

The number one clue about these forgeries:
ALL INVERTS OF THIS ISSUE ARE FAKES

The Format Printers never produced any "inverts" of this issue ever and these did not appear on the market until 2014.

ULTRA-VIOLET LIGHT DETECTION

I have discovered another way to detect many of the forgeries. Use an ultra-violet light on them!
In many cases with all the forgeries I have posted the now many pages for, I have found that many sets glow brightly like the fluorescent papers used on many, for example, Canadian stamps in the past. A word of caution on this though. Many forgeries I have found, which all have the yellowish gum, do not glow or have lower grades of brightness or have numerous fibers in the paper that glow. In quite a few cases I have found the sets to have mixed papers, as in , several values glow and several are either less bright or do not glow at all!
There are only two answers to this oddity that are possible. It is either the forger is so lazy that he just grabs whatever paper is handy or....there are numerous different printings of the forgeries and this has been going on much longer than my discovery of the early 2014 massive movement of the forgeries onto the market.

The basic rule to follow with all stamps produced by the Format Printers is,
THE IMAGE SIDE OF GENUINE STAMPS DO NOT GLOW AT ALL.
The Format Printers used basically all the same type of paper on all the stamps they produced in the 1980's as did they use the same gum type except for a couple sets they produced in 1989 when newer types of gum were becoming popular in the stamp printing business.

I note that these images are taken with an iphone. Conditions make the brightness differ with each picture taken so the genuine set "looks" different as far as brightness. the images are to give you a basic idea of what to look for.

I have found that the inverts which have the white gum all glow brightly. Here is the comparison.

Now here is where it starts getting very confusing.
For the normal perforated version of this issue that I have purchased only one (the 3c value) of the forgeries glow brightly as this image shows. The rest are even darker (no glow) than the genuine stamps! All have the yellowish gum.

Even though these are two different printings the colors, fonts and everything in normal lighting is the same.

Not sure about the imperf inverts and lost the imperfs (shows how much I value these fakes) so I do not have them in my possession. Maybe you have that answer....

Here are gum comparisons.

Gum Comparison of a Fake Stamp with Original
For this issue I have found both gum types.
The fake inverts (lower right) have the white gum. The normal perforated stamp forgeries and the imperforate stamp forgeries have the yellowish gum. I imaged the imperfs before I lost them somewhere.
Because we have both types of gum I am putting in both descriptions.
Description 1
Unlike the gum on many of the forgeries that are flooding the market right now the gum is more yellowish in color on these. It is opaque though in comparison with the original gum. This type of gum has appeared on several other issues I have detected as forgeries like the St. Vincent Century of Motoring issue and several Locomotives sets. It is having a tendency to curl worse than original gum. I do not know if these were produced earlier by the forger and held until now, but they did not appear here on the market until recently. Everything else about the forgeries is the same as all the other forgeries I have described as you will see. This yellowish gum does make them harder to detect though at first glance without originals to compare with.
Description 2
The white 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 invert errors have ever been on the market nor recorded, it proves these to be modern forgeries of the stamps.

For the imperforate inverts...well I cannot afford to buy everything. It stands to reason though because the inverted frame set I did purchase has the white gum that the imperforate inverts probably have the white gum as well.



Screen, Font and Color Comparison of a Fake Stamp with an Original Stamp
Let us use the 1c stamps for high resolution comparisons. I use 1200dpi scans for viewing.
You may have noticed that the 1c fake value is not inverted! Don't ask me why...I guess the forger forgot to "invert" it.
This first comparison shows you how inferior the screens are. I first compare the Judo Athlete.


You can see that the screens used on the forgery are coarser. Much of the details are lost on the forgery. You may not notice that the forgery has screening all over the judo athlete whereas on the original there is no screening on the whitest areas of his uniform. For this issue it appears that the Format Printers used various types of screens and also used no screening on certain white areas, using instead the whiteness of the paper as part of the overall design of the stamp image. This indeed makes the stamp image very hard to duplicate and thus it is easy for you to tell the fakes from the originals just by looking at the whitest parts of the image!
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 here is a look at the weights and fonts


Here you can see a big difference in the color of the weights. You can also see the fonts are very close. Can you see the difference in the screens used? Look at the yellow areas. Format used a fine "dot" pattern on the yellow. The forger continues to use the same screen throughout the image. Another easy way to tell which is which.

Now let's look at the frame border.


You can see that the screens on the forgery stamp are completely different.

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 1c Summer Olympic Games Stamp Pair with the Original Stamp Pair


Now that you know what to look for it helps yes?
Still you can see that most people will not even notice it which is what the forger wants!

Comparison of the Fake 3c Summer Olympic Games Stamp Pair with the Original Stamp Pair


Note the deeper blue color frames on the fakes versus the light blue color on the originals.

Comparison of the Fake 60c Summer Olympic Games Stamp Pair with the Original Stamp Pair


Note the yellowish color frames on the fakes versus the tan color on the originals.

Comparison of the Fake $3 Summer Olympic Games Stamp Pair with the Original Stamp Pair


Note the deeper green color frames on the fakes versus the light green color on the originals.

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. If panes are packaged like this it is a sign to beware!

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 Vincent 1984 Summer Olympic Games stamp forgeries 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 3 to 4 megs.

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

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