I cannot give you a better Picture at tyhe moment since it has not yet arrived,I only bought this on Sunday.The following link shows a better Picture.
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/131397116405?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
It looks pretty good,but is it too good to be true ?If it is the ral McCoy I will have got the bargain of the year.
Perhaps you can explain to the not-initiated people over here why this particular stamp would justify paying full c.v.? And on what grounds does the seller claim a value of 15,000+??? I must be missing something...
Okay, sort of answering my own question. It seems that the numbered maltese cross cancels (1 to 12) were used in London from March 1843 to some time in 1844.
This means that it was used a few years after the Penny Black was replaced by the Penny Red. Number-in-MX cancellations exist on Penny Blacks, but they are very rare. It seems that each number is known with only 3 to 10 examples. If that is a fact, it would explain the value.
The cancel looks slightly different from the ones I find when googling, by the way.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin 13 Jan 2015 10:36:44am
re: Is this the real thing?
Charlie
I would certainly get a cert for your acquisition before getting your hopes too high. There has to be a reason why the seller did not sell the stamp with a cert and/or sell it through a auction house which would get full cv or more for a such a rarity. Smells funny to me.
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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -Edmund Burke"
I'm with Bobby. A cert would be mandatory. Expertization will compare the ink on the cancel to see if its composition compares with the ink used for cancelling stamps back in the 1840s.
Many years ago, maybe 2008 I found a listing on eBay for rubber stamps that were of
German cancels. They were made to look like the ones used during the super-inflation-
ary period, when used stamps were worth hundreds of times more than MNH. I e-mailed
him and he said that they were okay because they were modified so they could be told
from the real ones.
I looked closer at them to see what he referred to. I then explained that if someone used
one in such a way, that the modified part was off-stamp, that would be forgery and he
would also be involved. I reported him to eBay, but of course they did nothing.
As I researched this rubber stamp thing further I discovered rubber stamp kits on eBay
where you can make your own stamps with just hand-drawn artwork from any computer
graphics program. So cancellations should be expertized and looked at very closely indeed.
I hope your's turns out to be real tho Charlie2009, good luck.
The MX is the real thing but the Nr.2 was put there with some water soluble colouring.It's just a Penny black from plate 1b with nice large margins and a 2 added