Art masterpieces are forged so why not stamps? The copying of art masterpieces is not considered a crime. In fact, if not for copying few people would be able to possess the beautiful works of art that we see everywhere. In fact, master copyists enjoy good livings and reputations and are often in demand. The same may be said of stamp copyists. If not for them, many of us may not even know what some of the world renowned masterpieces look like. Early collectors did not have many varieties so rather than leave conspicuous blank spaces; they filled them with copies which looked real at a distance. No attempt was made at deception as they were fully acknowledged as copies. Early collectors acquired them without thought of bad, and we still find them today in many old collections.

However, copying stamps is one thing, while forging stamps and passing them off as the genuine stuff quite another. Many forgers exist in the stamp trade. Such a man, and a in his dark trade, was Francois Fournier - who poisoned philately with his notorious forgeries for a quarter of a century.

Fournier was a serious counterfeiter and his forgeries have been scattered all over the world, and still turn up in many lots and packets sold at low prices. He may not have been the most dangerous counterfeiter but he was certainly the most prolific, and because of that the most odious.

Just as artists and criminals have a partiality for certain of their works, Fournier took great pride in his forgery of the 4-centime stamp of Alsace-Lorraine, the variety with figure displaced to the left, and vertical bar at the top of the T of "centimes." So perfect is this forgery that it has deceived even profoundly studious collectors. One copy was sold for 900 francs by a dealer who had probably bought it from Fournier for about one franc.

Following the Alsace-Lorraine forgery, which Fournier considered his masterpiece, there was another in which he knew the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of attaining perfection. Modest original and canceled 3-kreuzer stamps of Baden, 1862 issue, were chemically deprived of their rose color, and later reprinted in orange, from a forged engraving of the rare 30-kreuzer value. During the two operations, the cancellation was preserved. The collector or expert then found pieces with paper, perforation and cancellation genuine, and had to examine the design very carefully or he would not be able to detect the fraud.

So meticulous was Fournier that some of his counterfeits were of stamps imprinted upon watermarked paper, which needed to be made in large quantities at high preliminary expense with regard to the use of the watermarking equipment. Fournier's watermarks are so clever that some believe that he deceitfully obtained supplies of the genuine watermarked paper.

A hideout for making such forgeries was founded at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1892 by Mercier, and a little later became the property of Francois Fournier, who became the originator of the notorious "counterfeits of Geneva."

Fournier was probably trained to be meticulous while he was a soldier during the Franco-Prussian war. Those who knew him attested that he was a meticulous workman, an excellent quality for a forger. It is unbelievable but Fournier even won awards for his forgeries! He was well equipped for his dark trade and hard a world wide network to sell his stamps. As the philatelic authorities at the time were indifferent to forgeries, Fournier was able to make a bundle and even win awards at philatelic expositions. 

Had Fournier stopped at merely imitating the crude attempts of other forgers, he would not have done much harm but he went out of the way to perfect his trade. His eye for meticulous detail enabled him to do real damage. Clearly he was motivated by material gain and not a bit by his artistic ability. As happens in most cases of greed, his stamp products became more and more suggestive of fraud, each year marking his progress in the making of new shades, perforations and dimensions. In his later years, he employed the modern technique of lithography and photo engraving with electrotyping for the multiple reproductions of engravings of various values.

Not satisfied with mere copying, Fournier aimed at perfection in his work. He personally worked on counterfeiting the more valuable stamps; actually touching up the plates personally to make sure that no defective stamp emerged. This is realized when we make a study of forgeries of the 5-franc 1878 stamp of Belgium. Of other forgeries, for which the cuts came to him all made, he undertook the printing in the desired tints, and issued certain values in many shades in order to include the rare varieties. He even imitated surcharges and imprinted his forged surcharges on genuine stamps.

It is not surprising that one of his specialties was the forging of cancellation marks, with interchangeable letters and date numerals. He applied the false cancellation marks to his own products and sometimes, on order from unscrupulous outsiders, to genuine stamps. For example, an engraver in Turin sent him forgeries of Baden, issue of 1862, in sheets of sixteen (four-by-four). Fournier "canceled" these on the unperforated sheet, and the sheet was afterward perforated in ten successive operations. However, some errors were made while working on all these. One notable, and perhaps laughable, instant was a cancellation of Alsace-Lorraine. It said: Urbeis 31 2 71 2-3N. This is ludicrous as in 1871, February had only twenty-eight days, and February never has more than twenty-nine!

A 'complete works of Fournier' comprising all his forgeries was once sold along with similar collections of the forgeries made by other firms. The seller said "I do not collect any of these and will be happy to aid you in detecting any stamps which are truly forgeries." Great was the astonishment of the buyer at the sight of this array of stamps all made to deceive. The number of inexperienced collectors who would have bought pieces like these and thought them genuine can well be imagined. In fact even a few advanced collectors had failed to examine their acquisitions. Unscrupulous dealers all over were publishing rank advertisements to sell the forgeries under false pretenses. Fournier himself had the gall to urge that "If you do not know my counterfeits, you are not a philatelist." Reputable men were often fooled by his stamps and passed them on innocently. So much so that today those forgeries are still around and continue to be a menace. 

After the sudden death of Fournier during the World War, his shady business was taken over by Hirschberger. For various reasons the 'business' began to decline. This was unexpected as one would expect a 'new management' to infuse greater life into an organization. Hirschberger died with almost all of Fournier's immense stock on hand. Then something fortunate took place. L'Union Philatellique de Geneve (UPG), knowing well the shame of these "counterfeits of Geneva," wanted to restore and uphold Geneva's good name among philatelists. They set out to purge the city of Fournier's products. The society obtained Fournier's stock and equipment from the Hirschberger estate, and rendered them harmless. Indeed, this effort of the society resulted in a large payment to obtain all the business rights, production equipment and the complete stock.

The subsequent work of the society brought to the open the enormity of Fournier's operations. It took two months of steady work just to clean the production equipment, and classify the engravings for stamps, surcharges and cancellations to sort and list over 900 pounds of counterfeit stamps. The final inventory indicated that if the stamps had been genuine, their catalog value would have been 2,846,796,600 French francs or about US$100,000,000. These counterfeits included specimens from over 150 postal administrations, sometimes nearly a hundred varieties from a single country alone, and indicated that Fournier had devoted special attention to Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Luxemburg, and the French Colonies. It became evident that the counterfeits would have sold for as little as 1000 for 1 franc. Dealers buying direct from the manufacturers would have paid about $100,000 for the stock and ultimately, collectors would have paid an astounding amount.

The details unearthed about Fournier's equipment are astounding and would have been termed admirable if not for their criminal use. His presses printed a maximum of five-by-five or twenty five stamps of current dimensions to each sheet. The cuts used for the stamps were copper, zinc or wood engravings. Those for the surcharges were mostly copper engravings which had later on superseded the zinc cuts which he had used earlier. The cuts for cancellation marks varied, and included brass, zinc, boxwood and cork-plug types. Some of the wood engravings were on spools. For the French colonial cancellations, the dies were set on brass, with special handles which permitted quick changes of dates. The Swiss cancellations of 1882 were the official pieces, in original boxes and with city names interchangeable as issued by the Swiss postal department.

After careful deliberation, the UPG decided to serve the interests of philately through three actions. First, they rendered all production material useless and put them on display in a museum in Geneva. Secondly, they kept some specimens of each of the stamps, branded them as counterfeits by printing specimens of each counterfeit, cancellation, and mounting all these, complete and classified, in a restricted number of albums. These albums were to be sold by subscription to prominent collectors, experts, dealers and philatelic societies, and were intended to be used for specimen-to-specimen comparison and guidance in detecting Fournier counterfeits in existing stocks and collections. Finally, all remaining counterfeit materials were completely destroyed.
Based on these actions, picked specimens for 480 albums were branded as counterfeits by an indelible ink inscription on the front of gummed, and on the back of ungummed. Stamps and imprints of all the cancellations were made in corresponding numbers. The cancellation prints were made without any modification of the engravings, so that the cancellations would appear normal, thin, thickened or partially illegible; whichever was a faithful copy of that which appeared on the counterfeit used stamps already in the market.

During the twelve months that followed this decision, the albums were made up by students of the Geneva School of Arts and Trades, under direction of members of the UPG. A total of 1,200,000 stamps were cut or torn if perforated, to make into the desired single pieces, bands or blocks, and pasted in-place. The albums, which sold at approximately $75.00 each, so as to partially reimburse the UPG for its expensive undertaking, were oversubscribed and the subscription had to be closed far in advance of the advertised date. The albums which have been filled with valuable references, are a revelation to the majority of those who consult them, and have aided immensely in the study of counterfeits and the battle against them.

Finally, on September 20th, 1928, the third decision was carried out and all the remaining stock of Fournier counterfeits were burned. This was witnessed by seven members of the UPG including the President and in the presence of a sworn Sheriff's Officer of the City of Geneva. The affidavit of the Sheriff's Office testified that no recognizable stamp or portion of a stamp remained in the ashes from the fire.

Today it is possible to detect Fournier's counterfeits in collections by comparing them with the album specimens. Hence, the infamous stamps in his remaining unsold stock are no longer a menace. Thus was laid to rest the infamous work of Fournier the worst forger of all time, who was a plague on philately for 25 years. To this we owe a debt to the public-spirited philatelic society of Geneva that came forward and acted, at great expense to themselves, for the good of the whole fraternity.