THE SAINT VINCENT 1987 CENTURY OF MOTORING STAMP FORGERIES

Featuring Carl Benz, Charles Rolls and Sir Henry Royce, Enzo Ferrari, and Henry Ford

Saint Vincent 1987 Century of Motoring Forgery Set
Scott# 1044-1047 Stanley Gibbons# 1085-1088


I have found documented proof dated April 2015 that at least 10,000 perforated forgery sets have been moved onto the market!
They were sold in Gaertner's 30th auction in lot number 21438A.

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 September of 2015.

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 1987 Century of Motoring stamp issue. I have now as of September 27 found that forgeries of the souvenir sheets exist as well. All are being offered online right now as I began to write this on September 5, 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 some 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 Audubon Birds issues including inverted frames, Dogs inverts, Flowers inverts, Michael Jackson inverts, 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.

The main movers of this junk now since 2014 and still to this day in 2017 are eBay sellers: armi777 based in Latvia.
asrm10 based in Latvia.
balticamber2011 based in Latvia.
kamalmedicine based in India.
kamalthematic based in India.
alphaomegaphilately based in India.
stampbank_of_london based in the United Kingdom.

I note that apparently some as you can see are the same seller using different user names.

These sellers are spamming and have been spamming eBay lots for several years now. They offer this junk at 99c start bids. Or they offer fake color proofs and fake inverts and fake imperforates for amounts that would not relate to true value of the genuine stamps. Namely because for most the genuine material was either destroyed or only found on archival press sheets of which very few were saved in the archive. Therefore, this junk offered by these sellers (which you can see nobody appears to care in the philatelic community) should be avoided because all you are doing if you buy it is to:

1.) Enable the producer of these fake reproductions to continue to rip you off!
2.) Enable sellers like these to continue to rip you off!
3.) Enable the flooding of the stamp market with these fake reproductions to the point that now over 50% and in some cases much more are now being sold to unknowing collectors and thus you are ripping off other collectors!

I noticed sales of the Saint Vincent 1987 Century of Motoring being sold on eBay from users asrm10 and armi777 based in Latvia. These sellers are large volume dealers and was and is offering these fakes in bulk lots of 5, 10 stamps all still attached. The starting bid is 99c! Buyers constantly bid them up to $3.00 to $6.00 ranges. They all are selling thus they are now everywhere in the world! Hundreds have been moved!

I suspected that they are forgeries because other forgeries I have purchased from this same dealers. I recently purchased one set in blocks of 10 and sure enough they are exactly the same as all the other forgeries I have written about. There is a difference with these though. They are by far the best forgeries I have come across yet! It appears that the screens used compare to the original screens in size! Up until now the screen size of all the other forgeries I have discovered were of an inferior quality.

Still, the images are less detailed and the screen patterns differ. The paper is still the thinner white type used on the other forgeries. The gum still is white and opaque and there are many other differences from original stamps printed by Format. You see I specialize in this issue and have a ton of originals including the original reversed image errors, missing gold errors on and on and you can read all about that on other pages I have produced. Therefore you can be well assured I know a fake when I see one.

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

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.

For the perforated and imperforate forgeries of this issue that I have acquired, the forgeries glow brightly as this image shows.
I use a genuine perforated stamps from the Bileski estate for the comparison.

Here are gum comparisons.

I must now as of September 27 inform you that I have discovered that the forgers have used two different types of gum. When you compare original stamps with the forgeries there is one type which is similar to the original gum. It is still opaque and is of a shiny look but yellower than the other type making it less obvious. Still when compared you can see the stamp image through the gum on the fakes clearly. Indeed this gum type makes an even more dangerous forgery. The comparisons and discovery of the two types will be in the newly added section on the souvenir sheets. I have also noticed that the darker gum type is warping quite badly. One souvenir sheet has already curled almost a quarter showing that more than likely the forgers seeing this effect have turned toward usage of the below described white gum which is used on the majority of the fakes.

Gum Comparison of a Fake Stamp with Original
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 forgeries have ever been on the market nor recorded until now thus it proves these to be modern forgeries of the stamps.

I note how you can see the image through the gum on the forgeries whereas you can barely see through it on originals.

Screen, Font and Color Comparison of the Fake Stamp with an Original Stamp
Let us use the $5 Henry Ford stamp for high resolution comparisons. I use 1200dpi scans for viewing.
This first comparison shows you how dangerous these forgeries are. I compare Henry's face.


You can see that the screens used are very similar in size. The forger still cannot perfect the image though. The colors are bland on the forgery. The details are blurred. 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 "dull". 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 on the forgery are bolder.

Now let's look at the gold border.


You can see that the border on the forgery is a bronze color. It is interesting (at least to me) that during the time of Format it seems they used a special gold ink that could not be matched. It originated when they were printing Trucial States stamps in the late 60's. When Questa took over printing the Trucial states stamps the issues with gold borders and such were different in texture and color. apparently the forgers could not match it either as the above image shows.

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 $1 Carl Benz Stamp with the Original Stamp


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 $2 Enzo Ferrari Stamp with the Original Stamp


Comparison of the Fake $4 Charles Rolls and Sir Henry Royce Stamp with the Original Stamp


You may notice on the forgery that Mr. Royce has what looks like green egg all over his face. A printing error that some may start calling genuine. Since it is a forgery it can never be considered "genuine".

Comparison of the Fake $5 Henry Ford Stamp with the Original Stamp


You can see that there is a lot of differences between the two printings.
You can also see how easily these can and will fool many collectors and dealers.

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

Here is an image of the Saint Vincent 1987 Century of Motoring Carl Benz $1 upper left corner block from the original printing.


Now here is an image of an upper left corner block (less a stamp I used for this page) from a fake stamp pane.


Now look at the image of the original print corner block and the image of the fake print corner block shown above. Can you see the difference?
The perforations run through the selvage on the original panes on all sides. There are no perforations on the selvage of the fake panes! All originals printed by Format have the perforations running through the selvage of the panes.

You can now define the fake Saint Vincent 1987 Century of Motoring stamps easily and can now possibly avoid being ripped off!

Here are links to images of each stamp with an original next to a fake. 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. Please be patient with downloading them because each file is around 8 to 9 megs.

The Fake Saint Vincent 1987 Century of Motoring Souvenir Sheets
Scott Catalog# 1048-1051, Stanley Gibbons Catalog# MS 1089

After I had purchased the above shown stamp sets of the issue and verified they are forgeries I suspected that the same would hold true for the souvenir sheets. I began scanning lots for sale on eBay but the seller I got the stamp sets from was not selling the souvenir sheets. To my amazement another seller which I do believe is tied to the same seller, both based in Latvia, was selling imperforate souvenir sheets at 99c starting bid on each one! Now if you studied my pages on the varieties and errors of this issue you would see that I do not show any imperforate souvenir sheets to exist other than what was mentioned in the final sale of the archive. No dealers have or are offering them as imperforates in the past nor present except for this one Latvian dealer. I jumped on it and got them all for $1.25 each! So today, September 27th, 2015 I am writing this section and displaying what to look for so you don't get ripped off!

The Fake 1987 Century of Motoring Souvenir Sheet Set

ULTRA-VIOLET LIGHT DETECTION

For the imperforate souvenir sheet forgeries of this issue that I have acquired, the forgeries glow brightly as this image shows.
I use genuine numbered perforated souvenir sheets for the comparison.
Are perforated forgeries of these souvenir sheets out there? Perhaps you have the answer to that question.....

To begin I took a couple scans of the gum side. This first scan shows you the gum side of the four fake souvenir sheets with four original perforated souvenir sheets. Which ones are the forgeries?

Gum side of the Fake 1987 Century of Motoring Souvenir Sheet Set with Originals


Obviously it is the four on the left. Notice the far left one is different. It has the white super shiny gum. The other three the yellower opaque gum.

Now here is an image of the gum side of the forgery with an original and with an archival double souvenir sheet. All are the Henry Ford souvenir sheet.

Gum side of a Fake 1987 Century of Motoring Souvenir Sheet with Original and Archival Proof Pair


Note the originals and archival proofs are all the same in gum type. The Format Printers never changed gum type on these.

So what are the differences? Let us compare the Henry Ford souvenir sheets in detail.

This first comparison shows you how dangerous these forgeries are. I compare the blue Mustang.


Here again as with the stamp issue you can see that the screens used are very similar in size. The forger still cannot perfect the image though. The colors are bland on the forgery so they use brighter colors to compensate. You can see the forged mustang is a much brighter blue. The details are blurred. 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.

This comparison shows you the difference in paper and the logo.


This comparison shows you the difference in detail on the stamp.


You can now see there is a huge difference. I can tell you this...the Format Printers never downgraded the quality of stamps like this even in the last years when they reprinted many issues.

I do not know but suspect that perforated fake souvenir sheets are also out there. Buyers and sellers BEWARE!!

Here are links to images of each souvenir sheet. All are scanned at 1200dpi so the files are very large. All were scanned at the same time with the same settings and nothing is enhanced. Please be patient with downloading them because each file is around 16 megs. Right click the links and open in separate pages to compare them.

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

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