FORGERIES

The stamps of Rijeka were exceptionally often forged, due to rarity and great demand of stamps of the states formed after the collapse of the great empires. As for Rijeka, the political message on stamps, as well as small printing run were important. Pressured by philatelic and trade circles in Switzerland and Italy, the first forgeries were found already in times of the first temporary issues. It's important to bear in mind that the originality of a stamp or a postmark, or the age of a collection aren't sufficient for an average originality evaluation. Many forged stamps have a signature overleaf or a hall-mark of former traders or even stamp examiners who, on purpose or by accident, marked forged stamps as originals. The most frequent and known hall-mark on forgeries is PAPE. Every stamp has to be examined, because even the least values were forged, from the basic stamp to various overprints on them. The best method is the comparison to the original stamps, because some forgeries are of bad workmanship, so that even a less trained eye can tell the difference. The biggest problems are created by the FIUME overprint forgeries on Hungarian stamps, and the easiest to recognize is a part of forgeries of ordinary and commemorative issues having neither the roughness nor the structure of the paper as on the original stamp, save the color and the print.

The elaborated samples and pictures are only the most frequent forgeries, regularly found in auctions and traders. Various Internet auctions or sight unseen auctions are particularly dangerous because of no possibilities of sending a big enough picture showing recognizable forgeries. Many professional traders and auction houses don't possess valid attests and they sell forgeries, convinced the stamps were original. If it's possible in any way, it is advisable to see every stamp with your naked eye, because low-quality scanning or photocopying can hide lots of details. There are very successful forgeries of some rare issues. Since the number of forgeries is expected to grow by technology improvement, it's impossible to close this chapter. The reason enough to be more cautious is that the catalog price of the stamps of Rijeka increases from one year to the next. At any larger purchase, I recommend the examination of stamps by official examiners of the stamps of Rijeka.

See some of the most frequent forgeries:  FORGERIES

The characteristics and examples of forgeries you can find in the book.