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How to Authenticate Stamps

Philatelic forgery and postal fraud have been around almost as long as the adhesive postage stamp itself. The most famous early example was in the 1870s, in the days when transactions were completed by telegram, when huge quantities of forged stamps circulated through the London Stock Exchange. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the handiwork of so-called master forgers such as the American S. Allen Taylor inveigled itself into the most prestigious collections. In World War II, both the Allies and the Nazis forged stamps for use on items of propaganda which they would slip into the enemy's mail. These days, equipped with a decent color-illustrated stamp guide and a few tools, the modern collector needn't be fooled.

Things You'll Need

Magnifying glass
Watermark detector
Perforation gauge

Instructions

- 1
  Establish whether your stamp has been made by the correct printing method. Forgers often get this wrong. Consult a stamp guide for the particular country that is said to have issued your stamp to establish which methods prevailed at the time in question, then examine both sides of the stamp under a magnifying glass. Prior to the 1970s, U.S. Stamps were usually printed via the intaglio process whereby a steel sheet is applied to the paper under huge pressure -- look for telltale ridges. A method associated with British stamps is letterpress, where the design is raised like the printing in an old book and the ink floods around it, hence the color usually bleeds through onto the back. Many stamps from the 30s onwards were printed by photogravure, an elegant photo-engraving process also used in comic strips of the period. Essentially matrices of fine dots, modern stamps use the chemical process known as offset lithography.
- 2
  Check for a watermark, a widespread security measure until the 1970s. Any good guidebook will tell you whether your stamp should have one and, if so, what it should look like. You can try to detect a watermark by holding up the stamp to a light source, but most dedicated philatelists acquire a watermark detector of some kind, which works either by applying fluid to the stamp or by viewing it through a small compression device which reveals variations in the paper. They are available online from philatelic accessories stores and retail from $30 upwards.
- 3
  Assess the perforations around the edge of the stamp. A guide will inform you of a particular stamp's perforation measurement. You'll need a plastic perforation gauge, which you lay alongside the stamp until you find a matching set of holes.

Stamp Collecting