New postage rates bring wider opportunities to use 1st class forgeries.

With little news on new stamps these days, it seems that every day something new comes to us in the way of forgeries.

Today an email arrived from a customer in Ontario, Canada, who had a letter from the Chester area, which was delivered in just three days!  That in itself is worth remarking on.   Here's the letter:

Letter from Chester to Ontario delivered in 3 days, postage rate £1.70.

 

The very white of the head points to a likely forgery, even allowing for scanning variations, but the close-up shows this to be a well-known and widespread forgery, with reversed lettering:

Forged 1st class stamp with alternate lines of 'iridescent' printing mirrored.

Somebody remarked earlier in a comment that the new 1st class rate was very useful for airmail rates.  This enables the users of these to easily and totally pay for many of their overseas sendings using only 1st class forgeries.

The £1.70 rate for European letters to 100g, Worldwide letters to 20g (and postcards) uses two of them.

The £2.55 rate for Worldwide letters 21-100g uses three of them.  What could be more simple.

Whilst in no way applauding this fraud, it does give overseas collectors the opportunity to acquire some different postal history!

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