Some Chinese stamps – cancellation forgeries or something else?
These days stamps don’t get me confused often, but the below Chinese stamps have done that. These are from the same lot as the Japanese Taxe Percue cut squares I wrote few weeks back. The stamps are ok, but the cancellations… I’ve got a nasty gut feeling I’ve landed with a pile of cancellation forgeries on common Chinese stamps.
Common Chinese stamps from late 1940s. But what's up with cancellation? I've never seen a cancellation like this on Chinese stamps.
At first I thought these could be some kind of revenue cancellations, but Googling around showed me that Chinese revenue items rarely have any western numbers on cancellations. And not a single revenue item I found had postage due stamp attached; I’ve got several of them canceled in similar style (see below image for example).
Some more Chinese stamps with similar cancellation. Notice there's also an postage due stamp (2nd on top row).
These look a lot like someone used or played around with date stamper. I don’t know if these could be some sort of railway or TPO (Traveling Post Office) markings, or from postal savings documents etc. where date stampers might have been used… A common nominator seems to be that all the items are roughly the same era: from late 1940s up to early 1950s. I’ve got maybe 70-80 stamps all canceled in similar fashion.
And they're not all just small definitives. Here's Northeast China Mi#144 and PRC Mi#144.
Any help and opinions for solving this mystery would be highly appreciated. Are these forgeries, or something else?
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Maybe just one child was playing with a date stamp.
@Duddek…. Possible (in which case these would be cancellation forgeries).
My first thought that it was a type of revenue cancellation as well but, another guess was that they could have been numbers applied on these stamps with a hand cancelling device because they may have been used on some cancelled checks (?) Is it possible that these stamps arrived on checks to an English speaking country and they were cancelled in this fashion? A wild guess I admit.
Larry Matthews
@Larry… A wild guess, true. But equally possible as any other alternative until otherwise proven.
I posted the pictues on StampBoards the other day (in hope of reaching some China/Chinese collectors), but didn’t receive any helpful replies. Just the usual speculation (=maybe fiscal/revenue use, maybe somebody played with date stamper etc)….I’m sure also this one will be solved sooner or later; just have to dig a bit harder to find answer.
This kind of cancellation does look like a date stamper or roller cancellation and not a normal postal service cancelling device — as has been mentioned — which makes me wonder if these did no serve postal duty on an envelope but may have been used in some other manner.
The straight edge on one or two of the markings suggests the edge of a rectangular rubber date stamp device (to me anyway). I used to play with date stamps as a kid and you often got a square edge inked up along with the date so that it, too, showed up along with the date.
Also some of the numbers are not registered evenly, but one above the other just like you’d get on a misaligned rubber date stamper where each numeral is changeable separately by rolling it up or down.
It’s possible that postal clerks without access to an official date stamper, simply grabbed a common date stamper instead.
The ink used is also unusual, the purple color not looking like a postal service ink which would typically be black. More likely it’s stamp pad ink. But why are they all the same light purple color? Was that a postal service standard color for rubber date stamps?
It’s also always possible that these stamps were not used on mail for postage but for other purposes such as on a postal receipt or perhaps had some other kind of fiscal use. We often see U.S. stamps attached to labels, tags, and other documents where they have been cancelled in some other manner — often with a pen.
What bothers me about my own speculations — and that’s all they are — is that some numbers are different on the same stamp. On the Northeast China stamp, for one. If a clerk had struck a stamp with a date canceller more than once, the same numbers would appear more than once. These numbers are different. So maybe that shoots down the whole rubber date canceller theory?!
Beyond these speculations, however, I’d say only a China specialist would likely know the answer. It’s odd that you have so many, and I wonder if they all came from one purchase? Or are these all stamps you’ve pulled from many others with more normal cancellations? If from one purchase, then I’d be suspicious that maybe one seller took easily obtainable unused stamps and cancelled them randomly to sell as used stamps — which is very possible.
My limited experience with stamps is that if it seems fishy there is a decent chance it is. I went through my very limited number of PRC and did not find any cancellations like this – mostly they are uncancelled. From what you’ve shown they all have the exact same cancellation color & font. Also, consistently illegible/random looking marks would not typically be found on such a large batch of stamps of a wide variety of values?
I won’t go so far as to say there is malicious intent. If so, it seems pretty amateur. If I wanted to be evil, I would use black ink to forge cancellations. Not that blue cancellations are unheard of but they seem far less common.
I’m just guessing here, hopefully I am wrong. I’ll keep an eye out for similar cancellations in the future and let you know if any pop up.
Actually there’s some variation with the ink appearance:some very dark, most medium like these, and some very light… To me the color is very similar to what was used in Iran/Persia at one time.
The same confuses me too.
These are from one single purchase (like said on the post).
But there’s plenty of these mint/unused too in the same lot, so I doubt very much that the previous owner did these.
Again I agree.
Possible… But all you need is just one batch of “truly bizarre” (revenue-related) kiloware, and you’ve quickly got a batch of 50-100 stamps that are sure to puzzle later generations… I’d be much more alarmed if I had full/complete sets, all canceled in similar fashion.
Anyway, here’s a more complete overview of the stamps I have (there’s some more that didn’t fit into scan): http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae185/scb_stamps/misc/china-stamps-027.jpg … As a quick note I can spot four or five stamps with digits “1969″. Could be the year when these were made, could be something else too…
This puzzle has some traits of any number of archaeological projects. There are manual stampers that click and flip and turn and will count incrementally. If you believed the mystery was important enough, you might be motivated to arrange this lot of stamps into a pile in order to read the full line on the stamper. If that was the case, the solution would be that a child was most likely playing, as others have already suggested.
Are there any purple stamper clues on the backs of the stamps??
We all want to know if the marks were made innocently out of ignorance, with intentional maliciousness to devalue the stamps, or for some other reason.
@Carol…Nope. The backs are clean apart from some hinge traces and thins. One stamp has a tiny piece of brownish paper on back.
Absolutely positively fake “cancels” for many reasons. Revenue and other type cancels don’t look anything like that. In general, there shouldn’t be 4-digit year usage for that time period. It’s all Arabic numerals, no Chinese numerics. The Arabic numeral font is the wrong style for that period. There’s no way that the same type of “cancel” would appear consistently on both Nationalists and Communist stamps, not to mention on regional issues. It shouldn’t be on a postage due stamp if it’s on all those other stamps. It’s all the same color ink. There’s nothing right about the cancels, only wrong. Sorry, somebody messed up what was a nice batch of pretty stamps.
Also, sorry to read about your UC. I’ve had to deal with it for 2 decades, so I can commiserate. I hope the flare-up doesn’t last too long and you are able to maintain your nutrition intake.
@Kim… Thanks. Lots of good arguments / observations / knowledge. Well, these will add to my add fakes & forgeries collection
Ouch… Two decades of UC; I can only sympathize… I’m still so wet-behind-the-ears with UC, that I’m hoping some miraculous wonder cure to be invented any day.
o ,my firend,i thinki can tell you because i am a chinese, these stamps are not damaged or kiddings.They are “value changed”stamps ,just like this condition,the post office print 100 million $0.25 stamps ,but the government suddenly said:we should change the value to $0.3,then they wil used the old stamps and print the world”it is $0.3 now” on the stamp.
and the blue numbers means “it is used”
@Haose Duan… But the blue cancel is a fake / forgery. All the comments above (and many collectors I’ve spoken about these) state the same: the blue markings on the stamp are not a real chinese postmark / cancellation.
oh,i have to say that there are a lot of ways to claim the stamps used.In some parts of China ,they even use the pen to draw a line on the stamps to point out that they are used.
So,in china,we call all this kind of stamps “used or covered stamps”
I’ve seen similar cancels (in terms of colour of ink and size of lettering) done by a northern newspaper, presumably on wrappers used to send newspapers by post? I forget now, which newspaper it was, I seem to remember North China Daily Post/Mail of Dairen? I think I may still have one or two, I’ll check … when I found them I assumed they were security marks done by the paper to prevent pilfering?