Lot 140 Hamburg - Germany SC#18,20(Mi#16a,19) 4s Green, 7s Violet 1864-1867 Perforated Arms Issue, 2 F/VF Used Singles, Click on Listing to See ALL Pictures, Estimated Value $30 USD

2 F/VF used examples of the 4s green, 7s violet from the 1864-1867 Perforated Arms Issue. The cancellation on the 7s is a forged cancel, based on the notes on the Stamp Forgeries Website. Michel Catalogue value is €38, treating the 7s as unused with no gum. Our estimate of the value based on the condition is $25.

As with all German states, except for the more common issues, there is always the question of authenticity: reprints, originals or forgeries. Fortunately in the case of Hamburg, the main test to determine authenticity is the presence of the watermark. According to Reverend Earee's book, "Album Weeds" all of the forged stamps have no watermark. All of our stamps are watermarked, suggesting that they are genuine. However, just to be sure we read the descriptions of the genuine stamp provided by Earee and compared our examples to these descriptions and found in each case that they match. To be extra sure though, we went to the website: https://stampforgeries.com/forged-stamps-of-hamburg/ and studied the detailed annotated images carefully, as well as the section dealing with forged postmarks. On the imperf stamps the website identified up to 18 characteristics of the genuine stamps and state that forgeries lack one or more charcteristics. We checked them all for each stamp. In each and every case where the cancellation did not obscure our ability to see the attribute under consideration we found that our stamps fully matched ALL of the identified characteristics of the genuine stamps. For the imperforate issues that had close margins, we did consider the possibility that they could be trimmed examples of perforated stamps. We would note however, that the margins on the perforated stamps are wide at the sides, but very tight on the top and bottom, such that a trimmed example would very likely at least touch the top or bottom frameline, if not slightly cut into it. On the imperforate issues, full margins are considered to be 1.75 mm at the sides and 0.75 mm at the top and bottom.