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ZAR £5 Pond - Fake or Fortune?

I was recently emailed by a dealer who knowing I was a South African and an authority of sorts on forged or fake Cape Triangles, thought I was just the man to advise him on the authenticity of a ZAR £5 pond stamp. The truth is that I am a Cape collector who knows only a little about ZAR stamps and who has always been puzzled by the reprints.

The dealer attached a scan of his Transvaal SG 187 and wrote that "Gibbons have a note that 'Most examples of No. 187 on the market are either forgeries or reprints'. I expect my copy is a reprint, but can you confirm this for me? How can I tell? Please let me know, politely, what you think of it." As if I as a South African would ever be impolite! This harks back to the old joke about the difference between South Africans and the English, namely that the English are too polite to be honest while South Africans are too honest to be polite. Another important difference, one that should be celebrated, is that South Africans win Rugby World Cup Finals.

I replied quoting the SA Colour Catalogue which says ""Most of the £5 stamps have to be taken as forgeries or reprints. The stamp should always be accompanied by a valid certificate. Mint copies are rare!" I have always assumed that most of my examples are reprints. I would say from looking at your image that it is a reprint. Yours is a grey rather than the deep green that a genuine example should be." I include the dealer's example below. You can see that it is almost grey in colour. Very odd.

I include a photo of a full packet of ZAR reprints headed 'Transvaal 1885, 1/2 p. a. 10sh/'. The sheet of £5 stamps were never included. The note on the wrapper quotes someone called Dennis saying "the only way to tell difference between original printing and reprints is the size of the perforations (holes)." How true is that?

I include two scanned ZAR £5 pond deep green stamps which are of fractionally different sizes. The used stamp is lightly cancelled PRETORIA '8 JAN 00'. It appears to have been cancelled with Putzel No. 14 which has "Two asterisks at sides". But in this canceller they are very clearly large round dots. Is Putzel wrong or is this a genuine and undiscovered ZAR datestamp? Or a forger's fabrication?

I would appreciate any advice you can offer.

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Johan64 has reacted to this post.
Johan64

This is always a difficult subject to explore - fake or geniune postmarks.  I would like to think that this is a fake postmark, the dots being the giveaway.  Here is another example of a fake postmark - the reason being fake is because this postmark was only introduced in 1894.

 

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Wood in TP 13: 61-75 listed commonly-encountered forged ZAR double circle post-marks; his list was updated by Drysdall and van den Hurk in TP 28: 2-18:

JOHANNESBURG:  2 MEI 86, 13 FEB 91, 11 OCT 92, 25 SEP 93, 15 NOV 94, 13 FEB ■95, 18 SEP E95, 12 OCT 95, 1 NOV 95, 8 SEP E96, 13 FEB ■96, 27 OCT 96

KLERKSDORP  20 NO E86, 13 FEB 91, 11 OCT 92, 15 NOV 94, 18 SEP E95, 12 OCT 95, 1 NOV 95, 2 MEI 00

KRUGERSDORP  23 APR 02

LICHTENBURG  10 SEP 87, 12 OCT 95, 1 NOV 95, 4 MEI 00

OTTOSHOOP 1 NOV 95

PIETERSBURG  2 MEI 86, 13 FEB 91, 18 SEP 93, 25 SEP 93, 15 NOV 94, 18 SEP E95, 12 OCT 95

POTCHEFSTROOM  3 MEI ■85, 12 OCT 95, 1 NOV 95, 5 FEV 96, 3 MEI ■00

They are usually noticeably black;  as Johan comments, a number of the dates are before 1894, which appears to be when these "double circle single date line" cancellers first came into use.   The example illustrated by Steve is typical;  here are three more.

 

Bas

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  • PIETERSBURG-18-SEP-E95-FAKE.jpg
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Yes, but the righthand copy of my two examples is dated '8 JAN 00' which is later than all the forgeries Bas gives for JOHANNESBURG and also earlier than those from KLERKSDORP, LICHTENBURG and POTCHESFSTROOM, all dated MEI 00. Mine is also lightly cancelled and has round dots unlike all three of Bas' examples which have stars or asterisks and possibly also Johan's which is indistinct and could possibly have a star or asterisk but which may also be round.

So, this has just gotten deeper. First, we have to resolve this datestamp issue, the riddle within the enigma, then move on to the mystery itself. Was Churchill a philatelist? I don't think so. A bricklayer and an artist, yes, but surely he never stuck stamps in albums? I'm guessing that he was probably a postal historian, if he ever enjoyed our hobby!

.

The Pretoria cancellation with round stops as side ornaments, and a remarkably widely-spaced Z.A.R  (no stop after the R) on your example dated 8 JAN 00 is a different matter,and, for the reasons given below, almost certainly genuine.  It is illustrated by Putzel as Put 15, though he misdescribes the round stops as asterisks - his illustration (scan included n the attachment) isn't entirely clear, but the wide-spaced Z.A.R is.

I have recorded over 30 examples of this cancellation, on a range of dates between 7.SEP.95 and x.FEB.00.   I was initially inclined to think that it was another fake cancellation because it was often rather clear and black,  most of the examples I have seen are on higher values (mostly 2/6, 5/-, 10/- and £5), and none are on piece. 

However

(a) this cancellation is seen on a number of examples of the £5 stamp which John Kaupe accepts as genuine on the basis of detailed study of the perforations  (his criteria are set out in an article in the Transvaal Philatelist Vol 40, No 2 of May 2005);  and

(b)  the examples of this cancellation that I have recorded between in May to July 1899 have a stop or unusual space between the two day numerals, and the year numerals ("99") are closer together than usual.  This is the kind of thing seen on other cancellers, presumably resulting from the number wheels having been put back in the wrong order after cleaning; and is unlikely to happen in the same way with a fake canceller.

The most likely explanation seems to be that these stamps were used genuinely but not postally, and were soaked off whatever documents they were used on so that they could be sold as having been postally used. 

I attach a file showing a scan of the Putzel catalogue entry and a range of examples, and would welcome any comments and scans of further examples.

Bas

 

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Many thanks Bas and Johan. 

I did use Putzel's reference book to study the various Pretoria datestamps. I studied No. 15 under a magnifying glass but it did not clearly show either as a round dot or as an asterisk. My failure shows why the work that you and Alex Visser are doing to improve the quality of the examples is so important for the likes of non-specialists like me.

So, whopee! I possess a genuine ZAR £5 (even if it was not postally used!).

I note that your last example and mine (top above) share the same date of '8 JAN 00'. How co-incidental is that? Their colour and cancellation is the same. They look as though they might even have come from the same document.

I found several blocks of these among my accumulation. I had a quick skwizz at Putzel but could not see the datestamp recorded, also Alex Visser's addendum does not show it. It is a very distinctive PRETORIA TRANSVAAL datestamp. What is remarkable about it is that it has a dot with an asterisk above it on either side of the datestamp. I thought the blocks were cancelled to order but there is now a glimmering of intelligence in me, I think, that says this is a forged datestamp cancelling reprints. Am I correct? Or stupid? Or both?

 

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Yes, I don't think there is much doubt that this is a fake cancellation. There is a fairly similar genuine cancellation, Put 21, but it is larger, doesn't have the two 8-stars at the ends of the date line, and gives time as well as date.  Put 21 dates range from OCT 00 to JUN 02;  all the examples of the fake that I've seen so far are dated 30 SEP 02 .

Bas

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Bob Kitchens submitted this ZAR £5 stamp to Jamie who asked me to comment on it.

The stamp arrived in stockcard with a note, "FORGERY 1892 as SG187. 'MIRZA HADI on reverse". See image below. I am not a ZAR specialist. I have a few of these but have never seen one with 'MIRZA HADI' on the reverse.

Hadi, some say Hadji, (typically a Moslem who has made the pilgramage to Mecca), was a Persian stamp dealer who lived in Paris. In 1910, Hadi asked the Dutch printers Enschede en Son, Haarlem, Netherlands, to reprint the stamps that the firm had printed for the now defeated and defunct ZAR. (The ZAR was occupied during the South African War (1899 - 1902) by Britain who renamed it the 'Transvaal' and made into one of the four provinces of the newly formed Union of South Africa in 1910.) These were not forgeries but reprints from original plates. Hadi subsequently flooded the market with these ZAR reprints, some with faked surcharges and overprints of the provisional and 'V.R.I' issues.

I was disappointed searching on-line for information on these. The Transvaal Study Circle has information on how to tell genuine copies from reprints and forgeries. A good research resource on the subject is Dr. G. H. Jonkers & W. J. Quik Book 'The Remainders and Reprints of Transvaal'. (Rotterdam 1998, ISBN 90-803152-4-9), which describes Hadi's activities in detail. The South African Colour Catalogue is sceptical with regards to this stamp. It says "The 5 Pound values must be treated as forgeries or reprints. This stamp must be accompanied by a valid certificate".

With 'Mirza Hadi' stamped on the reverse the chance that the stamp below is genuine is as slim as a gnat's whisker. What its got going for it, however, is a good green colour, typical of the original issue. Most forgeries and reprints are often pale and 'washed-out' or wrong, like the grey one at the start of this topic. The flipside of this is that with a deep green colour close to the original, the Mirza Hadi / Enschede reprints add to the confusion rather than define it. As such it made an excellent space-filler for old-time collectors who could not afford the real thing. The problem is that few people selling grandpa's stamps on-line today know it is a reprint. Caveat emptor!.

Thanks for submitting the stamp, Bob. Hopefully someone more expert than me will now comment further on it.

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