A potentially controversial 5x3 perfin on 1/2 tablet !

[wilbaer]

Something potentially controversial.... I came across this wonkey looking donkey on a 1/2d tablet yesterday and had consigned it to the forgeries section since I don't think a 5x3 pattern has been seen yet (at least not in any publication I have seen) and the horizontal line is so out of whack , but thought it might be an idea to do a 1200dpi scan to check the postmark ink situation and came up with this picture.

The extremely interesting feature about this, when zoomed in close, is that the postmark ink bleeds very noticeably and pretty consistently into the OS holes, which is a pretty good indication that it is not a forgery unless extreme care and patience has been taken to run fake ink into position so that it matches the original postmark.

I have attached the closeup of the postmark and holes here and will add the front and back of the stamps too. The holes do have that certain un-evenness that is prevalent with other T perfins of the era.

I would naturally be very interested to hear from the Tassie specialists about their thoughts on this.... it is naturally very easy to consign this to the forgery section of my collection, but something is telling me not to write this one off, despite appearances. Looking forward to any opinions from you all.

Cheers
Jerry A

SG216 halfpence tablet pattern 5x3 forgery.jpg (332.03 KiB) Viewed 889 times

SG216 5x3 closeup.JPG (181.57 KiB) Viewed 889 times

SG215 5x3 back.JPG (112.22 KiB) Viewed 889 times

[Ross Ewington]

Thanks for posting this Jerry

In my opinion, the perfin is a fake

1) due to the method the T perfin was produced, it would be highly unlikely for both "bars" of the T to be punctured at an angle

2) a 3 hole puncture as part of a T perfin has never been seen to the best of my knowledge

... the varying diameters of the individual holes are a bit of a worry too

regards - Ross

P.S. at least the holes have been punctured rather than drilled

[wilbaer]

HI Ross,

Thanks for the reply - yes, the standard methodology for producing these T perfins from the normal usage of the old line 12 machine does not fit well with this particular stamp, I do agree.

I have seen other perfins which have a reasonably large hole displacement from being 'in line' with each other like this one is on the horizontal, so that is possible in itself, but the angle is a concern.

The bleeding of the ink into the holes does make me wonder though.... why would a serious forger do something so obviously out of whack that it stands out so obviously against anything else in existence and then go to the extreme trouble of painstakingly adding ink into the holes of a ridiculously cheap stamp ? It seems an exercise with no real benefit if this were the case, as it would be widely written off.

The one thing that did cross my mind is that, at some stage when the edict came out to start the T perfin process, some type of 1900's brainstorming must have taken place at the time to work out how best to achieve the reality of producing these new "T"'s and whether some sort of prototype ideas were trialled on the cheapest stamps available before someone came up with the idea of using an old line-machine to perform the operations on a long-term basis.

It was certainly a reasonable solution to revamp a line 12 machine in hindsight, but would that necessarily have been the very first idea to have been mooted, as the perfing machines would not have been a cheap bit of kit at the time to mess about with?

As a side note, I don't know how much Tinsley's 'Earliest Known Date' table for T perfins that he produced in 1987 has been updated by anyone, but we have found a new pattern to add to this list, that being an 8x5 pattern, which we have on two denominations, so I guess it is possible to find new patterns, even nowadays. plus we have found about 6 or 7 new early dates that I have updated, replicating his table.