Fakes and forgeries - Europe Stamps

The difference between forgeries, counterfeits, and fakes in stamp collecting

By Eurostamper — May 31, 2008
See more about: Collecting tips | Fakes and forgeries

Although the terms fake, forgery, and counterfeit are often used interchangeably, they technically refer to rather different concepts in the world of philately. When trying to avoid them while collecting (or while trying to concentrate on collecting only stamps of this kind) it is useful to keep them separate.

Forgeries
These are stamps that are created for the purpose of deceiving collectors, i.e. for making money from tricking a buyer into thinking that the stamp is in fact a legitimately produced collectible. This type of phony stamp has been around since about 1860, only twenty years after postage stamps in the modern sense were invented.

Fakes
This refers to a legitimate stamp that has been altered in some way to make it appear to be of a more valuable type. This could be altering the overprint, the cancellation, the colors, details of the design, or even the perforation.

Counterfeits
This is a copy of a legitimate stamp made to fool authorities; i.e., to be used to actually send a parcel.

The waters of phony stamp identification are muddied considerably not only by people using these terms interchangeably, but by the question of what constitutes a legitimate stamp in the first place, and by the fact that governments have occasionally issued their own phony-baloney and propaganda stamps.

For example, Great Britain released counterfeits of its own stamp into circulation in 1856 to test its own security features. Also, during times of war governments have made counterfeits of their enemies’ stamps, either to deprive the enemy of postal revenue, or (altering details on the stamp) to demoralize the enemy.

Examples of such stamps are stamps that Germany created in the 1930s that were copies of Britain’s Silver Jubilee stamps, but with the Jewish Star of David etched into the background, and the legend changed to boldly read “THIS WAR IS A JEWISH WAR”; and American-made “German” stamps from 1944 changing “Deutsches Reich” to “Futsches Reich” (”the Reich is gone”) and adding cadaverous facial features to stamps showing Adolf Hitler. (It must be said that the workmanship on the German stamp outdoes the American one.)

To further confuse matters, many counterfeits and forgeries, being highly collectible, have themselves been forged. The stamps of the infamous Jean de Sperati, an Italian stamp forger, are so famous that they are often worth more than the original stamps he was forging.

There are other categories of wholly or partially not-real stamps, such as bogus stamps, which are stamps that copy the general look of an issuing body’s stamps, but are in fact original (and illegitimate) designs. These bogus stamps have also been forged, of course.

These categories can be very interesting and exciting niches to collect, but caution must be exercised when obtaining such issues. Who knows how many levels of phoniness the stamp you buy is buried under!