Britain’s 180 years of stamp forgery

As fakes continue to blight Royal Mail, Eleanor Steafel finds out how to spot the genuine article

Jean de Sperati. He just sounds like a 19th-century con artist, doesn’t he? Like someone Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have dreamt up for Sherlock Holmes to outfox. If Holmes were to take on a dastardly stamp forger, that is.

In the world of stamp forgery,

Sperati’s legend looms large. He was, in the words of one expert, “the king of them all”. His forgeries were so good they could trick even the most renowned of experts of the time. These days, a Sperati fake goes for up to £2,500 – at least as much as one of the original stamps he was copying.

But whether the fakes that continue to blight Royal Mail will one day sell for quite as much remains to be seen.

The revelation that our stamp supply chain has been sullied once more by counterfeits has come as no surprise to the philatelists who have been tracking the ebb and flow of stamp forgeries since 1840.

But though an expert could spot a fake (even a very good one) a mile off, most of us might struggle to detect the subtle changes in colour and design. With a top philatelist, we looked at some of the most notable forgeries of the past 180 years and found the hidden clues that gave them away.

THE PENNY BLACK, 1840

There was such concern about the possibility Britain’s first stamp could be forged they gave it an intricate, hard-to-copy design. “There was such a problem with forged bank notes from provincial banks in England, the people coming up with the first stamps were paranoid that there would be mass stamp forgery,” explains Vincent Green, chairman of Sandafayre, a stamp firm based in Cheshire.

The bottom corners of each Penny Black featured letters which would tell the Post Office clerks where an individual stamp came in a sheet. “There were 240 pennies in the old pound, so a sheet of stamps would be 240. They put a different letter in the corners of each one. So your first stamp would be AA. The next one would be AB. The idea was that the clerks working in the Post Office would notice the same two letters coming through if somebody successfully managed to produce one good fake.”

In this iteration, then, a clerk may have spotted the AB in the corners, which would have been a good indication of a fake.

THE QUEEN VICTORIA ONE SHILLING, 1872

This is one of a sack of forged stamps that were only discovered to be fakes 20 years after they were made. “In the London Stock Exchange the traders used to send telegrams all the time, and you’d have to stick a shilling on the telegraph form and postmark it – that was the fee,” explains Green. “Someone in that office faked the shilling green stamps and stuck them on the forms, postmarked them and threw them into a bin. And it wasn’t until 20 years later that a stamp dealer bought sacks of them and started to soak them off the telegraph forms and realised they didn’t have water marks.

To Green, the fake is obvious thanks to the engraving lines around the Queen’s cheek, which are much coarser on the forgery.

THE QUEEN VICTORIA TWO SHILLING, 1876-1880

This Sperati fake is as detailed and convincing as stamp forgery ever got before the advent of modern technology. “The perforations are right, the postmark is genuine,” says Green.

In this case, Sperati “managed to bleach out the stamp that was on that piece of paper which was a cheaper stamp. He then put a new stamp design over it. And so the paper is right, the perforations are right, the postmark is right, and he’s just filled in the stamps.”

What gives it away, then? It’s only really the slightly bolder colour and thicker lines around the Queen’s face and neck that give it away. The real deal is just a little more delicate.

THE QUEEN VICTORIA ONE PENNY, 1881

This really shouldn’t fool anyone, says Green. The perforations are all wrong, for a start. “The spaces between the holes are much bigger, so the teeth of the perforation are fatter. So there are effectively fewer holes down the side of the forged stamp than the other one.”

The paper on the forged stamp is also “really white”, which means it’s likely to be a 20th-century photographic rendition.

THE UNIVERSAL POSTAL CONGRESS ONE POUND, 1929

This stamp is often considered “the most beautiful stamp ever created”, says Green. “It looks like a bank note or a bond.” Again, he says, you look at the forgery and “you can just see that the photographic process has failed to keep the quality of the design”.

“So it’s just coarser and rougher and the paper is white and modern and doesn’t have a watermark.”

THE QUEEN ELIZABETH II 24 PENCE, 1992

This stamp is what Green considers “a proper forgery” in that it was produced to defraud the Post Office. “A lot of forgeries are created to con collectors but this – together with the stuff coming out of China at the moment – is used to defraud the Post Office itself.”

It’s a decent fake, he says, though when you see the two together you can immediately see some problems. Namely, the late Queen’s profile is all wrong, with a pointier nose, more pursed lips, and a slightly shorter, slimmer neck. “The coarseness of the reproduction means the design looks completely different,” says Green.

“They haven’t drawn it themselves, they’ve copied one they’ve got, and the technology of the time didn’t do a brilliant job.”