The Rare Sperati Forgeries

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PAPUA/BRITISH NEW GUINEA 2/6d LAKATOI
SPERATI FORGERY.

This is the 'Holy Grail' to all serious Papua collectors. The Sperati forgery of the British New Guinea 1901 2/6d Lakatoi. Known to exist, I doubt a copy has ever been previously on the market in Australia. Leading Australian Auctioneers dealers like Rod Perry and Charles Leski told me they have never offered this item in the decades they have worked in this business.

Perversely, the stamp has an old 1939 Royal Philatelic Society London Certificate (signed by keeper of the Royal Collection, Sir John Wilson!) saying it is a genuine SG #14b (today this has been re-numbered by Gibbons as SG #16 - Cat. Ł2,500). That Certificate and opinion is wrong, and again shows slavish obedience to Certificates can be costly, as the fake is worth MORE than a genuine SG #16! It is a Sperati forgery, and is quite possibly the only one now existing. Interestingly the Certificate is dated well BEFORE Sperati’s activities became widely known.

In the definitive book, “Postal History Of British New Guinea and Papua” by Roger Lee, on page 99,   Lee states that only 2 examples are known, and shows (as does the BPA book) the small flaw in the left value tablet that distinguishes the fakes from the ”genuine” article via the minute differences that exist. The stamp is comb perforation ( genuine SG #16 should be line perf) and the frame size is 30 x 25 mm and should be 29.5 x 25.5 mm.

Sperati has taken a genuine 1d black and red Lakatoi stamp, and carefully (somehow!) bleached away only the outer red design, leaving the central Lakatoi, and printed his fake brown vignette in the same place by lithography. This is the ONLY time Sperati ever used this technique on any forgery, i.e. bleaching out PART only of a design. The differences from the genuine, as in all Sperati forgeries, are microscopic. The forgery is just so good it would be accepted by 99.9999% of dealers and collectors without comment as the genuine article. It was indeed so good it fooled the RPSL and Sir John Wilson!

Jean de Sperati was very incredibly clever in that he faded or bleached all of the design (or in this unique example, part of the design) of a genuine but low value stamp, and then printed his new design over the top. This way he ended up with the correct paper, size, perforations, watermark, and cancel (Although on this copy, the barred numerical cancel is understood to be a superb fake as well!) This stamp is sold with the RPS Certificate verifying (wrongly) that this is a genuine Ł2,500 stamp.

On that basis, my price of about half Gibbons for the genuine is quite attractive, especially as no copy has been seen on this Australian market for many decades, if ever.   It would be a key addition to any fine Papua/British New Guinea exhibit. Indeed to ANY serious Oceania/Commonwealth collection.

The scan is not too good re colour accuracy, sorry, but used an alternate program to the one I usually scan with. In reality the colour of this forgery matches the genuine virtually identically. Price of Papua - $A3,500.

( Stamp now SOLD - to a leading dealer! Info has been left on this page here 'for the record' of other students of Papua. )

Tasmania Ł1 1892 Green and Gold Queen Victoria "Tablet" SPERATI FORGERY: "Used" with a genuine circular cancel, "Hobart Tasmania APR - 1901", and is the ONLY example of this stamp ever seen by most large dealers I have mentioned it to, or shown it to. This exact stamp I have in stock is illustrated in the BPA superb book on the Sperati forgeries, and the excellent Harold Bynoff Smith 'Forgeries' volume.

It is believed to have been a "one-off" attempt, and Sperati it seems abandoned the idea of making more copies, after this absolute perfectionist decided he could not 100% accurately colour match the "real thing". A ton more detailed background on Sperati and his amazing forgeries is found at - www.glenstephens.com/snapril04.html

A quite cruddy looking copy of the Ł2 Sperati Roo sold at Stanley Gibbons Sydney in late November 28, 2007 for $A4,770, so my $4,000 for this is a BARGAIN! Just LOOK at how UGLY that stamp was! - www.tinyurl.com/5zs56f

This Ł2 Kangaroo is by far the most "common" of the four Pacific region Speratis, as about two dozen exist - mostly "used". So this possibly unique Tasmania example has to be a blue-chip bargain at 20% UNDER that price - $A4,000. Comes complete with the original Bynoff-Smith album page, and photocopy of the BPA London Sperati handbook pages on this stamp, showing this is the exact example illustrated there. $A4,000

·    GREAT BRITAIN 1880 2/- BROWN SPERATI FORGERY

I also have just sold another very rare Sperati Forgery. The rarest Great Britain single face different un-overprinted postage stamp, the always fiercely sought after 1880 2/- Brown. The normal stamp is a rarity, SG 121, and is grossly under-priced at Ł3,250 as a quite tiny number were printed, and most were thrown away on the parcel wrappings they were used on. A boring little brown stamp on brown parcel wrapping seemed to appeal to no-one at the time to teat off and retain.

The replacement VERY large sized bright 1883 high values were a different story.   Even its same design counterpart the 2/- blue was always far more popular. This Sperati used forgery is as always brilliantly done, and how you’d pick it as a fake is a mystery. This example came from Bynoff-Smith, and this exact stamp is illustrated in the Bynoff-Smith superb ‘Forgeries’ volume on British Commonwealth stamps. (Ditto for the Tasmania 1892 Ł1.)


It was priced at only $A1,750 and this was only a % of catalogue for the genuine, a very cheap way of buying a Britain SG #121, most especially the rare Sperati forgery of it!   It was the only example of this forgery I have ever owned or seen offered, and the price in the UK may of course be somewhat higher than this - I have nothing whatever to guide me in this respect as SG Specialised does not price it!   The famous 1/- green QV "Stock Exchange forgeries" (not done by Sperati) of which many 100s - possibly 1,000s exist, sell for almost this sum each, and are fully listed and catalogued by Gibbons.

                                                                                                      A LITTLE ABOUT JEAN SPERATI

Jean de Sperati is universally regarded as the finest and most dangerous stamp forger ever to have lived. He was born in Italy in 1884 and died in 1957, living most of his life in France. His material was so dangerous the British Philatelic Association decided to protect philately and purchased his “stock” and printing blocks etc in 1953, for a sum said to be $US40,000 - an absolute fortune half a century ago.

As a valid comparison of what $US40,000 would buy in that era, Harmers London sold the entire ‘T.E Field’ collection of Australian Commonwealth in 1948 for Ł7,500.   It contained masses of proofs, essay, and mint Ł1 and Ł2 Kangaroos by the bucket load - block after block after block - pages of them, and dozens of used. The finest collection of the Commonwealth ever offered, it would readily sell for over TEN MILLION today if offered for the first time.

Sperati was so good, a mailing of 18 forgeries addressed to Spain was seized in 1943 by French Customs who has them assessed as being all genuine. He was arrested on a charge of 'exporting capital' estimated at being worth 300,000 Francs without a permit, and was summonsed to appear in court. Exporting forgeries was at the time legal if sold and identified as such, and free of duty or taxes.

Sperati would “sign” each very lightly on the reverse “facsimile” with easily erasable pencil, thus complying with the law! Sperati made fools of the Authorities in the long court trial by forging three more identical sets of the same 18 stamps in question, and tendered them to the court!   The Judges were impressed, dismissed the capital export change, and levied a token fine for “disturbing the normal routine of the French customs service.” ( !! True !! )

Sperati was a master craftsman, and produced very small numbers of meticulous masterpieces, rather than the masses of low quality JUNK quality material manufactured by Panelli, Spiro Brothers and Fournier etc. He had an intense interest in chemistry and associated areas, so he was able to make his fakes from GENUINE stamps. This was a very dangerous technique, as the paper, size, cancel, perforations and indeed some of the design were all then 100% genuine.

Sperati is best known in Australia for his excellent 1913 Ł2 Kangaroo forgeries of which about two dozen are in collector hands.   Despite the relatively large number available of this particular fake, they still sell for many $A1000s each and are highly sought whenever they are offered. They are catalogued in the now HOPELESSLY out of date ACSC at $5,000 “used” which is a lot MORE than a genuine 1913 Ł2 Roo is catalogued at - and that is of course Australian’s most valuable regular issued postage stamp. (‘Mint’ Sperati Roos are in ACSC at $10,000.)

Prestige Auctions in Melbourne realised over $4,000 for an ordinary used example in their 24 January 2004 Auction shown below. Showing just how strong Sperati prices are right now. Along with ALL high end Kangaroo stamps.    As you can see this copy has a machine cancel - a clear impossibility for a heavy parcel! This was originally a ˝d Green Kangaroo which had the green colour bleached right out - but Sperati left the postmark intact.

This Ł2 Kangaroo was the ONLY stamp of the Australian Commonwealth ever forged by Sperati. There are three other stamps from the region he is known to have produced, and I am proud to offer two of these three right here on this website

Life Member - American Stamp Dealers' Association. (New York)
Also Member of: Philatelic Traders' Society. (London) ANDA. (Melbourne) American Philatelic Society, etc

GLEN $TEPHEN$

Full Time Stamp Dealer in Australia for over 25 years.

Life Member - American Stamp Dealers' Association. (New York)
Also Member - Philatelic Traders' Society. (London) ANDA. (Melbourne) American Philatelic Society, etc

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E-Mail: glen@glenstephens.com The Number #1 Web Site: www.glenstephens.com

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