It goes without saying that since eBay chose to disband all of its fraud prevention programs the number of forgeries and bogus Chinese philatelic items on eBay has spiraled out of control.

The years I spent as a Stamp Watch Committee member (for Chinese stamps and covers) gave me tremendous satisfaction because I felt I was doing something about a problem that adversely effects stamp collectors. The frustration of seeing so many forgeries on eBay and the fact that eBay images can now be easily copied and saved has led me to try a new approach.

Several years ago I stopped posting pictures to the‘Gallery of Forgeries’ because it was scaring people away from collecting Chinese stamps. So I limited the gallery to just three categories: Liberated Area stamps,Provisional Neutrality stamps, and the fake specimen sheets created and originally sold by eBay seller John Hill. In this last category I wanted to preserve images of the fake “specimen” overprints applied to the stamps before affixing them to the specimen sheets. At some point in the future the stamps are going to be removed from the sheets and sold individually, and I want people then to be able to trace them back to the fake specimen sheets. [As a side note eBay seller chariston is currently offering some of the fake specimen sheets.]

I have now created a new category in the ‘Gallery of Forgeries’ named ‘Recent Forgeries.’ This way I will not have to fill our magazine with images of forgeries.Shown here are a few forgeries recently seen on eBay.In our web site “Gallery of Forgeries” you will see many more listed using the user names of the eBay sellers (each followed by a number, starting with number 01).By clicking on an image you can often view a larger image.

I must again point out that I am not saying that the eBay seller is the forger, only that they are selling forgeries. In some cases this may be unintentional, but in most cases these sellers are offering so many that I can only conclude that it is intentional.
Prominent among the current sellers of forgeries are 416zr53 (Brooklyn, NY), 8hk8075 (公主岭, 吉林省,China), cover--king (China, China), jk201112 (Long Island City, NY), hhonlone (Hong Kong), pmworld777(长春, 吉林省, China), and subjecttt (JX, JJ, China).

It is interesting how they change their eBay username rather than opening a new account. They do this so they can keep their stars.hhonlone started out as zxd0902 in August 2012, changed to augusstamps in Decmber 2012, spink365 in July 2013, and hhonlone
in February 2014.

I do not generally put in print how I know a stamp is a forgery, lest I alert the maker of the need to correct a defect that betrays him. If a reader has a question about a particular item pictured here or shown on the web site please email me.

I recently received a question about a block of four of the imperforate printer’s waste of the $5 Die III Chung Hwa Book Co. Dr. SYS definitive of 1939 (Scott 361 variety; CSS 446Bb-e). It can be found with the vignette in numerous out-of-place positions, including omitted and inverted. Image ‘cover--king 10’ is a forgery of an imprint block of six with the inverted vignette. It seems strange that the forgers would attempt to duplicate an item of printer’s waste, but the genuine inverted and omitted vignette examples are very popular with collectors and demand a premium.

Seller anssss2020 (Beijing, China) is still offering stamps and souvenir sheets he has chemically altered.You can always find a bunch of his fakes for sale on eBay. Recently he has been offering fakes of the Formosa Official Postage Stamps of 1886.

In a recent printed auction catalog I noticed four imperforate between examples (Images 1-4) of the 5¢,10¢, 50¢, and $2 Hong Kong Postage Dues of 1940,printed by Commercial Press, Ltd. (Scott 69-79; CSS PD 85-95). Five values of this set have always been available as imperforate printer’s waste: the 5¢, 10¢,20¢, 50¢, and $2 (CSS PD 89a, 90a, 91a, 93a, and 95a).Interestingly these newly discovered (after 74 years)imperforate between specimens are four of the five values that exist as imperforate printer’s waste. You will not see these varieties listed in the next edition of the CSS Catalog; they are fakes.