Great Britain Philatelic Society

hallo everyone,

we wre recently shown this stamp a group member had got in a collection. Everyone first thought it must just be washed out or otherwise processed. However even under a microscope there was no sign of tampering.
I have not seen any mention of missing blue in any literature. Any thoughts?

Regards
James

I too have such a stamp, which turned up in a "job lot"

It is unfranked (but lacks original gum), badly creased, but otherwise whole. I too was puzzled, as the usual effect of water damage on this issue is to wash out the purple and leave the blue relatively unchanged.

Here is the stamp in question alongside a typical water-damaged specimen.

If you look closely, there are faint impressions of the tablet - I wondered if it was an absence of ink on the roller rather than a washout?

A friend from me has got this stamp. I have no idea- it is not washed out....

Remnants of the blue? See red arrows

Another explanation might be that exposure to UV light (ie strong sunlight) has bleached out the colour.

Some dyes are more susceptible to such bleaching than others.

Somebody somewhere must have conducted experiments on those lines.

Regular household bleach will create the *exact same* effects. You can either bleach the entire stamp or you can take a cotton bud, small artists brush or dropper and apply bleach to small areas to make a particular colour vanish such as the value table or make the value vanish etc.

I conducted my own experiments with some damaged examples of these some years ago after seeing these items offered on ebay like the ones above and it was so easy that even a child could produce them. Try it yourself and you will see exactly what I mean.

This means that items like this should be treated with suspicion.

Hope this helps even if a year later.

Here's a part-missing value tablet on a KEVII 5d. I guess this was caused by unwanted paper (or similar) on the plate at the time of printing.

Mike

You'll notice in my previous post that King Edward VII has a rather feminine hairstyle!

Here are the results of some of my personal experiments with household bleach.

You will see what is possible and how easy it is. These supposed varieties should of course be avoided at auctions.

Bleaching stamps is nothing new, Sperati was doing it many years ago.

Are you sure that isn't a blue crayon mark from a registered item Mike? The colour doesn't quite seem to match.

There ARE blue crayon marks on the stamp, but I was referring to the left-hand value tablet which is partly missing. Or am I partly missing something?!

Ah ok I though that you were trying to say that the missing part of the value tablet and blue line were caused by paper on the plate, I misunderstood I guess and thought that you were inferring that the blue lines were caused from that as well.

The stamp shown could well have been bleached too, sometimes if heavy handed you can see a lighter area on the back where the bleach soaked through the paper. The problem with these is that they are so simple to create it would be near impossible to detect a genuine error, many are fooled because there is a postmark over the area that is removed and refuse to believe that the ink can be removed even though beneath the postmark.

The scans I posted will largely demonstrate this point.

Best Wishes

all quite fascinating and thanks for the input. I had the stamp looked at by a couple of people during the Festival in London and the comments were very similar. The stamp passed on to another friend who collects Levant as an oddity.
all the best
James