First issue forgeries and Roy Mackal

mikwizzy

I was reading Roy's 1996 LPS article on teh bforgers of the first issue

He writes
"In a future article I will point out one major identifying feature for each forger which is sufficient for identification"

The only other article of his on the topic that I can find is Jan-March 1997 where he describes how to identify the Fournier forgeries.

Does anyone know if he did ever reveal the one feature per forger?

Bryant

Hi Mik,

I remember talking to Roy about forgeries. I have a bunch and he identified them all.

I think he found there is one characteristic that identifies all forgeries. And not one for each forger. The forgeries are all a tad bit smaller, like a quarter-mm. I had forgotten about this. I'll have to find old notes. I think it had to do with using poorer paper than Todhunter. It shrunk more. Todhunter was a stationer; he used better quality paper.

This is just for the 1860s 6c, 12c and 24c.

I thought it was pretty important as there are so many forgeries of the first issue. Maybe check it out and do a journal writeup. It's a quick way to cull forgeries, then figure out which one later. But most forgeries seem obvious. It is the Fornier ones that are tougher.

mikwizzy

Bryant

Thanks
I also seem to remember reading something about the overall size from Mackal. I'll see if I can dig it out

mikwizzy

Bryant

I've found in some of my own notes that I've written " Mackal - Fournier forgeries are 0.5/0.75 mm smaller"

Travis

I just found the information as well. It is in Roy's editorial of the Jan-Mar 1997 issue of the journal.