T pattern on High value Roos

[David Coath]

Dear All

The other day I was approached to provide an opinion on the attached.

They are a 10/- , 1 pound and 2 pound all with T perfins. They are stated to be CofA but the reverse scan does not show a clear watermark. The postmark on the 10/- indicates CofA as it is 1937.

I am a T collector and to my eye they look characteristic of the T style but the 1 and 2 pound are not listed in David Andersen's Australian Official Perfins catalogue so this makes me wonder.

Does anyone have any thoughts or insight.

t perfin coa 001.jpg (154.3 KiB) Viewed 3108 times

David

[Ross Ewington]

Points to ponder:

1) none of the stamps have a Tasmanian postmark (or a discernible one as in the case of the £1). Most definite forgeries of T perfins that I have seen have been on stamps with non-Tasmanian cancels (see the fairly recent post on the 4d violet KGV perf T http://tps.org.au/bb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=209#p2826 as an example ). The Tasmanian Government has operated Tourist Bureaus in Melbourne (and possibly in Sydney) as long ago as the 1950s and maybe slightly earlier ...... if there was a Tas Tourist Bureau operating in Melbourne in the late 1930s, then that would assist the case for considering the VIC postmarked examples to be genuine

2) although the state of the punctures "look right" on the 10/- and £1 values (and a little dodgy in my opinion on the £2), they appear to have been produced with the same set of 5 pins and this needs to be investigated as the chances of the stamps being punctured with the same 5 pins is, if not impossible, extremely unlikely. The pattern made by one line of punctures made by the 5 pins needs to be accurately measured and then compared with the other five lines ...if they match exactly we have most likely got forged T perfins produced by the same person. If they don't exactly match, it means that one or more of the perfins may be genuine but doesn't mean there isn't a forgery or two included in the trio.

3) David mentions that the watermarks are not readily discernible ..... I would have thought that a CofA wmk would be easy to see in the scan. If the £1 is actually 3rd watermark, a perfin on this stamp has been previously reported.

4) from my experience (I collected T perfins for 15 years and have been selling them for another 15), the Tasmanian Government didn't generally apply the T perfin to many higher value stamps with most issues with denominations of more than 2/- or $1 being scarce to very rare (like the 5/- Roo, the $2 Navigator and particularly the $2 Painting). Multiples of stamps making up higher rates (especially from the decimal era) are not uncommon.

At this stage, I am not ready to accept or dismiss any of these stamps as being genuine. Over to you.....

Ross

[Revenuer]

A wise man once said to me "He is getting better at his craft and that is bad".

[Ross Ewington]

Dave ...you've viewed a few punctures in your time. Is it just me or is more likely than not that each single row of 5 pin-holes appear to be an identical shaped puncture to the other five?

I have been staring at the backs of the stamps for quite some time (I must get a life) and the longer I look, the more they appear to be the same. They really need to be compared physically before judgement is passed but I'm starting to think that my preliminary verdict is now "fake, fake, fake".....and dangerous ones at that. What do you think?

[David Coath]

Dear Ross , Dave and All

Yes the nature of the 5 pins looking similar is interesting. Ofcourse the nature of the device being an altered line perforator would mean that the pins would tend to be straight and consistent and therefore a group of 5 would look much like another group of 5. But this is not the case as true T patterns often show specific characteristics in any group.

As Ross observes these share the same characteristics in both the vertical and horizontal groups and this is most unlikely to occur , say one chance in 120 . But for the 3 stamps in a rare group to all be the same one 1:120 chance the chances are very unlikely indeed.

Given this, the postmark evidence, the fact that they have not been reported all weigh heavily against them being real.

I would say that they are fakes and I will tell the person who was considering them that. I will not explain my logic or share our discussions as it is best that the matter remains in house.

David