SPECIAL FEATURE OF THE GLOBAL PHILATELIC EXPERTS LIST,
a wealth of information on stamp expertising and forgery identification.

THE BLÜM CASE

In September 2006 a German court sentenced a Bensheim (near Darmstadt and Frankfurt) stamp dealer to jail time (on probation) in a spectacular forgery case. The dealer, who had during a decade conducted numerous own postal auctions (dba "Die Briefmarke"), had made more than 650 forged post office date stamps and more than 50 forged expertising hand stamps, all in metal(?), in order to considerably enhance the value of common items he sold.

Unsaleable hinged mint stamps could be transformed into valuable used ones. Overprints (Berlin?) were probably also forged and in some cases entire postage stamps (like a 1912 Swiss Pro Juventute). Expertising certificates were forged too. The felon was caught in the summer of 2004. His stamp business is still operating, but the counterfeit devices were confiscated by the police.

This is the biggest single case of forged postmarker handstamps and expert marks known to me, larger than the Madame Joseph and the Dieter Krüger cases. The damage caused to philately cannot be estimated. It is likely that these fabrications have been resold (or sold) on e.g. eBay too, and of course this junk is still out circulating. Regrettably, trust in the signatures of many of the most well-known German philatelic experts may also have been influenced, as it is very difficult for the ordinary collector to recognise the forged expertising marks.

However, the BDPh (German Philatelic Federation) has now compiled a guide (PDF images) of impressions of the forged devices and published it on the net. Most of the cancellations are from the German area, Switzerland being important too. The dates of the forged postmarks are fixed. Below on this page is a sorted list of all the postmarks with their dates for easy reference. In that list there are about 200 town names and a total of 579 different cancellations. In addition the forger may have produced further identical devices for some postmarks.

The BPP (Federation of German Philatelic Experts) is also distributing helpful information in order to diminish the consequences of this forgery of expert marks. With the kind assistance of BPP's Wilhelm van Loo I am able to furnish a better quality image of the forged expert marks here (large PDF file). Marks of the following 41 different experts were forged, and are illustrated in the PDF file:

Bechtold, Bothe, Bühler Georg, Burger A., Eliades, Engel W. (with and without BPP), Flemming, Grobe, Hefer, Heintze, Helbig, Herbst, Hey, Hochstädter, Hollman, Infla Berlin B, Echt Infla Berlin (with code letters +, B, H, W), Echt im Block geprüft Infla Berlin, Jäschke-Lantelme, Jungjohann, Keiler, Kesselstatt, Kimmel, Krischke, Lantelme, Lemberger, Mahr, Modry, Peschl, Petersen, Pfenninger, Pickenpack, Salomon, Schlegel, Sommer M., Ströh, Sturm, Thoma, Weigelt, Wiegand, Zenker Gotw., Zierer, Zirath.

You are advised to look with the greatest suspicion especially upon those stamps that fit both of the above criteria (postmark and its date, as well as expert name). Also check if the position of the expert mark is correct – note that a stamp may well carry just a forged cancellation. If the fake is not obvious and you are still in doubt, the best solution is to resubmit the item to the same expert, if possible.

G. Kock,  31 Oct. 2006
Earlier German postmark forgeries.  Forged postmarks worldwide, Finland. More forgery monographs.
Please find contact information here.  Address of this page: www.filatelia.fi/forgeries/blum.html

The forged postmarks

This list has been compiled by G. Kock based on all the images of the postmarks. It is first sorted by the stamp issuing country on which stamps the cancellation may be found. Minor differences in the mark's PO code numbers and index letters are not always noted here in the names of the towns; see the images.
* denotes commemorative postmarks (Sonderstempel).
"Two" means there are two similar postmarks with the same date.

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