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Swaziland Overprints | Batum
Aloe Trees | North
Borneo 1888-1892 | Samoa
Express
Swaziland 1889-90
Overprints
The
vast majority of Scott 1-9 or SG 1-9 in collections or offered for sale
are fakes, many of them made and sold by the Parisian stamp dealer/forger
Mirza Hadi in the early 1900’s. Hadi acquired or had access to
large quantities of reprints of the Transvaal 1885-97 general issues (see
note in SG after Transvaal Type 18) and ‘improved’ many of them with
forged surcharges and overprints of the Transvaal and Swaziland issues.
Identifying
characteristics.
This
scan shows a part set of genuine and forged overprints:
|
Note
the more consistent positioning and the somewhat cleaner appearance of the
forged overprints. The colors are somewhat different.
Knowledgeable
opinion holds that there were 60 copies of the 10s. printed. All of these
should have the design off center to the lower left and the overprint centered
and just below the lion and Boer in the shield.
This
scan is a blowup from the above:
Note
the slight upward tilt of the top arm of the letter ‘Z’, which is consistent
on all the forgeries I have seen. There are some genuine copies with a
similar tilt (Column 9?). Forgeries also have a thin right bar to the
‘w’, while most genuine have a thicker bar.
 This
last scan illustrates an almost definitive test. A known genuine 2 pence (expertised
by Peter Holcombe and confirmed against RPSL and BPA opinions on several copies
of the three top values) was cut in half through the overprint and laid on top
of a known forgery (Sismondo opinion). Note the very slightly longer
overprint on the genuine and the misalignment on the letters ‘land’.
This is destructive testing – the 2 pence copy I use was thinned, but the
stamp still serves a useful purpose. Dr. Harvey Pirie was reputedly
the first to suggest this test.
Other: The 5s. in the
genuine set in the first scan has a clean BPA opinion. The 2s.6d. has a
Sismondo opinion as a forgery.
If the name ‘Mirza Hadi’
rings any bells, he was also reputedly involved in forgeries of Italy, Persia
and Bushire overprints.
There are other forgeries,
notably by Fournier, and several fantasy overprints (see Earee’s ‘Album
Weeds’). |
