The Philatelic Hall of Shame

Henry Gitner Philatelists Inc.'s Philatelic Hall of Shame website asks if the stamp shown here is "some sort of rarity?"

"Sorry, this neat looking invert is a fake," the Gitner site points out. "This nifty little invert was probably contrived by a collector with a sense of humor and no ill intentions. Notice how the cancellation covers the frame and the inverted vignette? Whoever created this oddity took quite a bit of time to make it look this good. A gullible collector might be talked into buying this clever invert as a modern rarity: after all, how could the cancellation lines match so well if it was a fake?"

"Monochrome stamps, like this one, only went through the printing press once: there is no chance for an inverted center because all the elements of the design were printed with the same press stroke. Inverted vignettes or frames can only happen when a stamp is passed through the printing press two or more times," Gitner writes.

The Philatelic Hall of Shame  website is dedicated to showing dealers and collectors "how to sniff out those dubious stamps that so many people buy and sell simply because they don't know how to identify the problems."

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