Prize-less Specimens

The chances of a Jubilee collector filling the one remaining gap in his Specimen collection improved recently – the Hong Kong set appeared on eBay. He bid successfully but the vendor advised him that there had been a number of e-mails saying that the set was a forgery.

Taking a second look at the scan, the perfin looked convincing at first sight, if set a bit higher than usual, (touching the upper part of the frame). A closer look, however, revealed some inconsistencies with individual pinholes. For instance: the last pin of the letter “S” was nearer than normal to those in the middle of the letter.

Apparently, the set was returned to a Scottish auction house and thence to the original vendor in Hong Kong.

A few years ago, a spate of forged Jubilee specimens appeared at a Liverpool auction house. The punctures were so good that one might suspect that the forger had obtained the original De La Rue specimen die. He didn’t appear to have realised though that the three printers of the Windsor Castle series employed different patterns for their specimens since he used the die on sets not printed by De La Rue.

Forgers, it seems, need to invest in time for research. In the Hong Kong case, the forger invested cash for the basic stamps – he used an un-mounted mint set.

AJA July 2004