Fake British 17p stamp?

[Aaron J]

I was scanning through my stamps and ordering them to put into my album, and I came across this one.

This one has a central phosphor band and, looking at the value numbers, it seems to be printed in lithography (but then it's not smooth, but not so rough/dotted lined to be photogravure). However, my catalogue (Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2013) does not list anything to match this... however, looking at the bottom, there are no perforations (which may or may not be possible due to the sheet... I don't know that much about the printing process) and also the Queen looks a bit... shady... lacking detail or overshadowed in comparison with other stamps of the same face value and colour, especially the facial features and diadem.

I have uploaded the alleged forgery (the top picture) and an image of one that's genuine (the bottom picture) for comparison (both images scanned at 1200dpi).

So... it may be a no brainer, but do I have a fake on my hands?

[kannik]

AAron J - may I suggest that you repost this to the Fakes and Forgeries thread?
I think it might be seen by more people. I have some known forgeries and that`s
where I`m going to put them when I get the time!

[Aaron J]

Aug 30, 2013 21:04:12 GMT -5 kannik said:

AAron J - may I suggest that you repost this to the Fakes and Forgeries thread?
I think it might be seen by more people. I have some known forgeries and that`s
where I`m going to put them when I get the time!

ah.. I thought there was one around.. I couldn't find it.. but it's a bit late in the night... I'll do that! Thank you!

[Admin Bear]

no worries i can move this for you...
but to answer your question this is a variety not a fake. i will find the link and post it for oyu to see more information on these.

[Gordon Lee]

Greetings Mr. Bear
.
I think you are correct. If I remember correctly, there were over seven different booklet formats for this stamp.
.
Respectfully,

Gordon Lee

[Admin Bear]

www.adminware.ca/machin.htm

this site has album pages and TONS of information on these amazing stamps (if you ahve not read it already) assuming that it is not a variety you may have a re-perfed stamp not a fake but an altered real stamp.

[Aaron J]

A very interesting site! I may have stumbled across this before, but... not recently! Very valuable!

I shall have a look at this site more in detail concerning the stamp. And others!

Thank you very much for the link!

But may you explain, why were stamps altered and re-perforated and such like? Was it cheaper this way? I guess my catalogue isn't concise enough for this additional information concerning Machins and their varieties like this example...

[Admin Bear]

well variety and re-perfs are 2 different things and serve different purposes

a variety is a difference make my the printing company to distinguish different issues (perhaps issued at different times) or different formats (booklet, sheet, souvenir sheet)

a re-perf is done by someone trying to pass a stamp off as a variety. in most cases to make the stamp appear more valuable in others though to "fix" what was cut off.

i hope this helps some.

[Perfs14]

I feel the two stamps are quite significantly different for one of them to possibly be a fake. First there is the real poor printing in the first stamp, the resolution of the dots remind me of a cheap inkjet printer. Secondly, assuming that they were scanned at 1200 dpi and that the scanner was working properly there is a significant different in the size of the head, the position of the head and the size of the 17p value.
Below is a composite image of both stamps on top of each other one stamp is a negative image and the top is partly transparent...areas of difference are quite obvious.

Either the two stamps were printed with completely different plates by different printers or one of them (the top one) is a fake IMO

[FairyFoot]

Aaron J I hadn't realised there were "fakes" out there until reading Norvic's blog on the "Olympics" blog.norphil.co.uk/2013/06/olympic-gold-medal-stamp-trials-and.html

By the way, check your pound coins.... I was handed a fake in change from a large store chain (but flagged it with the cashier and eventually got a good one), andi t occurred again in a supermarket cafe... My lovely sub-postmaster also showed me a fake two pound coin...

[Aaron J]

Oh, I've heard about forged stamps... and I have read about the Olympic ones! It's quite surprising how they are overlooked. And the fake £1 are rather common, I've come across a few, most recently a couple of weeks ago. Though I've not seen a fake £2 coin!

About the stamp I queried about, I thank you all for everything. I've kept it, and once I expand my knowledge on Machins and these variations as well as forgeries, I'll keep an eye out and come back to it! It'll be interesting to see how other fake stamps look... I'm sure some would be rather interesting in terms of different quality!