Philatelic fakes and forgeries
Fraudulently manufactured imitation postage stamps / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In general, philatelic fakes and forgeries are labels that look like postage stamps but have been produced to deceive or defraud. Learning to identify these can be a challenging branch of philately.
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![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Brighton_forgeries_of_Jammu_and_Kashmir_by_Harold_Treherne.jpg/220px-Brighton_forgeries_of_Jammu_and_Kashmir_by_Harold_Treherne.jpg)
To a large extent the definitions below are consistent with those given in the introduction to various recent editions of the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. "We use the term "forgery" to indicate stamps produced to defraud collectors (properly known as forgeries) and to defraud stamp-issuing governments (properly known as counterfeits). "Fake" is used to indicate the alteration of a genuine stamp to make it appear as something else. Fakes might refer to cancellations, overprints, added or clipped perforations, stamp design alterations, etc."[1] While difficult to do today, one famous case is the Stock Exchange forgery of the late 19th century.
Questions are often raised about when a stamp is legitimately produced for postage. Matthew Karanian has proposed the following guideline:
Stamps are legitimate if they are recognized internationally in practice, even if they are not recognized expressly, as by a treaty or international agreement. This is the same principle of international law that applies to the recognition of nation-states. A nation becomes a nation-state when the international community begins treating it as such. For Karabagh which is not a member of the UPU but which does get its mail delivered, this demonstrate that the stamps it issues are neither propaganda labels nor part of a money-making scam.[2]