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| The Mystery Stamp |
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ABOVE: A block of 15 of the FIJI ONE SHILLING from the right pane with
variety from positions 12 to 15. |
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The plate used for all printing: contained 100 electros, split into two panes of 50. The electrotyped plate was not built up from a lithographed plate, and thus no transfer types can be found, a different situation than for the 5/- value. The quality of printing was quite high and J.R.W. Purves The Postage Stamps of Fiji, 1878 ' 1902, reprinted from The London Philatelist 1939 only lists nine flaws within the sheet. We illustrate a block of 15 from the right pane with stamps from positions 12 and 15 having varieties 'colour crosses frame above J of FIJI' and 'Hair line runs down through second I of FIJI to chignon' respectively. |
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| Purves Collection |
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We will now turn our attention to ', the second philatelist, J.R.W. Purves, RDP, FRPSL, an Australian who was probably one of the greatest philatelists of his generation. Purves, early in his collecting career, sold his Australian Commonwealth collection to King George V and instead concentrated primarily on the Australian States,
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| ABOVE: Type 2 impref stamp |
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with special reference to Victoria. However, he had many other collections, one of which was Fiji, as highlighted by the book he wrote. His enthusiasm was in plating stamps, and we have an eight volume collection of just 10 different Queensland 1860 revenue stamps, with every single stamp plated to each of 240 positions in a sheet! In his Fiji book he has a sub-section headed '1 /- Type 2, A Mystery Stamp - What is its status and origin?' We illustrate an imperf example of this stamp in a dark brown colour, cancelled by a postmark 'Nausori P. O. R. Fiji' and dated March 5, 1902. Purves states that he knows of only seven or eight of these stamps in Australasian collections, all but one being used. He points out that the stamp does not have the 'die flaw' - break near top of outer right frame - that appears on every 'Type 1' stamp.
Further, the 'Type 2' stamp has a different centre that results in the white circle band round the head appearing markedly narrower than in 'Type 1'. He surmises that if a forgery was the object, then he would think a photographic method would be used to produce a line-block from a working die. Finally, he stated: 'Those are the facts as I know them relating to Type 2, which, whether it be real or spurious, is undoubtedly a very rare and interesting item'. |
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| Checking Facts |
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We have done our own investigation, particularly a book by Lowell Ragatz entitled The Fournier Album of Philatelic Forgeries, 1970. François Fournier was one of the greatest forgers of postage stamps ever. From 1900 to 1914, he dominated the trade in philatelic forgeries, sold primarily as 'Facsimiles of Obsolete Postage Stamps'. By the outbreak of World War I, he had produced 796 sets of stamps, including 3,671 varieties. He only produced stamps from states that had passed out of existence, or which were no longer valid for postage. In his 1914 list of stamps, the 1/- Fiji was offered at one French franc! Fournier met enormous problems at the outbreak of World War I as no Government wanted stamps produced that could be used to convey intelligence. Accordingly most of his stock was confiscated and he died later in 1914.
In 1928, the Philatelic Union of Geneva (a prominent Swiss philatelic society) made up 480 albums containing a comprehensive selection of these forgeries, not all albums being the same as there weren't enough of some stamps still in the stock. These were sold at £5 each to dealers and philatelists as works of reference. On page 63 under 'Iles Fidji' there is a miniature sheet of 16 (4 x 4) stamps of, guess what, the Type 2 Fiji 1/-. It just shows how important it is to have reference books, although, to be fair to Purves, his book was printed before the making up of the Fournier Albums. |
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