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Showing posts from May, 2014

Madame Joseph Forged More than Just Cancels?

I am on a short trip to British Columbia to attend a funeral. But I decided to bring my album of Northern and Southern Nigeria with me in order to begin the process of looking for plate flaws in the De La Rue Keyplate stamps of both colonies. While examining the Queen Victoria keyplate issues of Northern Nigeria, I came across something very interesting that is also very mysterious. Many philatelists who collect British Commonwealth have heard of Madame Joseph. She was a British Stamp dealer in London, who was famous for forging cancellations on many stamps that are worth much more used than mint. She was known to operate between the First World War and the end of the Second World War, and the period covered by her work is the late Victorian period through to the early Elizabethan period. She is also known to have offered a service in repairing stamps. However, no mention has been made in the literature of her altering the stamps themselves to create more collectible varieties. I