A tutorial on early U.S. postal counterfeits

U.S. Stamp Notes Adventures in Expertizing by John M. Hotchner

The current and embarrassing glut of U.S. postal counterfeits stands in stark contrast to the hundred years before foreign interests, especially China, began to produce and market current U.S. postage in massive numbers.

The first U.S. postal counterfeits appeared with the issue of 1895. For the next 100 years, common single-color current-use definitives of the time were targets of the counterfeiters, and the U.S. Secret Service and the Postal Inspection Service acted swiftly to shut down counterfeiting operations.

The result is that counterfeits from that era are collector’s items and, with a couple of exceptions, quite scarce.

But those counterfeits are still out there, and they can be identified because most were produced by surface-printing methods, as opposed to engraving, which was used for genuine stamps. This makes them relatively easy to identify, and, if you know what to look for, stamps and even usages on cover can be found.

A recent find is shown here in Figure 1: the 1975 13¢ Americana Liberty Bell. This block of 20, plus a strip of three, is canceled June 24, 1976, though where is impossible to tell from the smudged cancels. Inset at the lower left is a genuine example of the 13¢ Liberty Bell (Scott 1595) for comparison.

Notice that the genuine stamp has at least one straight edge. That’s because there are no genuine sheet stamps for this issue: only coils and booklet panes. Thus, no genuine stamp can have perforations all around, and knowing that makes it easy to pick out counterfeits.

Another indication is the difference in quality between the engraved design of a genuine stamp and a surface-printed counterfeit.

Now for a little test. Shown in Figure 2 are three pairs of U.S. 2¢ red Washington stamps. Each pair has a genuine and a counterfeit. Can you tell them apart?

To learn the answers to the test, subscribe to Scott Stamp Monthly.

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