Monday, November 26, 2018

Postal forgeries

When the USSR fell apart in 1991, things got a little...loose for awhile. In the resulting chaos, some clever people with access to a decent printing shop started producing forgeries of Russian definitives, which were used quite widely on commercial mail in the mid-1990s. The 25R in particular is easy to spot with its lurid pink shade and terrible perforation, but later forgeries (of higher values) were more sophisticated.
This cover popped up on eBay recently:

Yeah, you don't exactly need a magnifying glass to spot that those 5R definitives look a little off. With a magnifying glass it gets even more obvious:

My best guess is that these were produced on a color photocopier and perforated by, um, any means available. I haven't seen it described before and this 1992 cover from Gomel' 19 is the only example I've seen. And by the way, I would love to read a good article on these postal forgeries - they are interesting and very collectable and I want to know more about them!

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