Wednesday, 25 July 2018

Non-Machin Postal Forgeries - 2014/2016 Christmas

By now most people know that various Machin definitives have been forged to defraud Royal Mail - the 1st class gold, blue, red, lilac and dark red are all quite common, and the recent 1st Large is widely used by eBay sellers!

What I hadn't seen until now were forged Large Christmas stamps.  What is interesting is that these are not produced in booklet form and the only normal outlet for them is Post Offices - although in theory any retailer could buy them for resale, although they usually stick to 1st & 2nd booklets.

2014. This 1st class Large seems to be self-adhesive, but it is the wrong size, and has elliptical perforations!  I suppose if that's what you've got you use it, but why produce something which is so obviously wrong?

The Large 2nd class is quite the wrong colour, and if you click on it to see it enlarged you will see that the definition is not as good as on the originals.


2016.  Similarly this 2nd class Large is quite wrong, and the perforations are too pointed.


If anybody has information about when and where these were used, we would be pleased to publish it.

2 comments:

  1. One presumes these would be easier to forge than Machins with security features, however it seems a little dumb to reduce the size and include elliptical perfs not found on the genuine stamp.

    I wonder what percentage of these get picked up by RM and how many get through into circulation?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've prepared a small update on these counterfeits for the August edition of the MBPC Journal.

    ReplyDelete

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