Forged cancel stamps discovered

Casual in both dress and manner, a man from Düsseldorf in his mid-forties came to Felzmann Auction House offering a plastic case containing over 40 old “post cancel stamps” that he had found walking in a park in Wuppertal. On closer inspection, these were seen to be carefully crafted stamp plates, including ones with a date setting up until 1993, made of zinc, aluminium and hard plastic – and a number of stamp heads made of rubber. Auctioneer Ulrich Felzmann immediately recognised these for what they were: the tools of a counterfeiter’s workshop! The clear priority was to secure the rest of the tools to avoid further forgeries – enlisting the help of the police if necessary. After discussing the situation, the finder obligingly left all the forged plates for further investigation in the interests of the collector community.

Axel Dörrenbach, Commercial Director at Felzmann Auction House and a member of German philatelic examiners association Verband philatelistischer Prüfer e.V., took an inventory of the items immediately. These were found to be counterfeit plates of Deutsche Reichspost, Deutsche Post in the Bi-Zone, Deutsche Bundespost, the French Zone and Saarland, Deutsche Bundespost Berlin, Deutsche Post in the GDR, Swiss PTT and the Liechtenstein postal administration. For the most part, they are town cancels with dates, but there are also three cancellations for special events and a number of airmail cancels, mainly from Switzerland. The aluminium, zinc and hard plastic stamp plates have all clearly been used many times and have been heavily inked. By contrast, the rubber stamps are for the most part brand new, particularly “Berlin”. It is likely that the forger recognised that forgeries with rubber stamps do not look authentic, even to collectors with a less experienced eye. In any case, all of the forged cancel stamps were manufactured from the mid-1990s or so.

An extensive list of all forged cancels with illustrations of the cancel impressions can be found here:

Other topics that might be of interest to you:

Stamp experts

The value of stamps