Originally posted by Bill Stoten
Hi Wenshiang,
These aren't as rare as you think. And Gibbons rate them at around 20-30 times scarcer than the ordinary mint ovpt. which may be a little conservative
From the examples I've seen I guess there's at least three sheets of these printed, but I've never seen one used, so I reckon they were circulated
shall we say 'by favour' in SPb remembering that it was war-time - just look at the quantity of errors on the arms printing of that period. To be
honest - I'm not sure, but I think they were overprinted in SPb so perhaps the errors didn't even get to China!!!
Is it genuine??? Comparing with scans only I repeat it's difficult to be sure but because of the embossing of the arms, it makes it easier to
eliminate digital forgeries as you should be able to see lighter ink on the top of the embossing, while a denser ink 'well' is in the sunken part of
the embossing. In this example, other characteristics (even at this low magnification) tend to suggest it's an original, as ink density, angle and
sharpness of impression are right. My guess again it's probably 90% OK with a 10% chance of it being a very good forgery... that needs to be
determined when you can see the reverse of the stamp etc. Hope that helps. |