Hi Mel,
It looks like a forgery to me.
The first full vertical bar in the top half of the shield is too close to the shield's inside frame.
As a result, the short bar to its left appears crammed in and is the wrong shape.
Stanley Gibbons list the 20 cent blue error as being perf 14.
Thanks nigelc. That was my way of thinking. It was almost perfectly centered and way to good to be real. I do not have any of the others to compare, so the info re the vertical bars gives me something else to consider in the future. The perfs were what really threw me.
Thanks for the response
You're welcome Mel.
I see in Varro Tyler's Focus on Forgeries, good illustrations of a genuine 5 centavos stamp along with a (different) Spiro forgery of this which he says is by by far the commonest forgery.
I've also seen forged examples with five or seven vertical bars in the design so there seem to be a lot of different forgeries of this set out there!
i have been collecting Guatemala since 1998 and have never seen one..real or fake, there is certainly not a space for it in my Guatemala album. I would take one of either.
I am pretty sure I answered my own question. However, the image shows what is supposed to be a Guatemala Scott #4b. 20 cent blue (error). The stamp perfs at 11 1/2. Guatemala Scott # 1-4 perf at 14 X 13 1/2. First clue!! But, the catalogue does not indicate the perf measurement for the 20 cent blue error. What am I missing?
Thanks for any help.
Mel
re: Guatemala Forgery ?
Hi Mel,
It looks like a forgery to me.
The first full vertical bar in the top half of the shield is too close to the shield's inside frame.
As a result, the short bar to its left appears crammed in and is the wrong shape.
re: Guatemala Forgery ?
Stanley Gibbons list the 20 cent blue error as being perf 14.
re: Guatemala Forgery ?
Thanks nigelc. That was my way of thinking. It was almost perfectly centered and way to good to be real. I do not have any of the others to compare, so the info re the vertical bars gives me something else to consider in the future. The perfs were what really threw me.
Thanks for the response
re: Guatemala Forgery ?
You're welcome Mel.
I see in Varro Tyler's Focus on Forgeries, good illustrations of a genuine 5 centavos stamp along with a (different) Spiro forgery of this which he says is by by far the commonest forgery.
I've also seen forged examples with five or seven vertical bars in the design so there seem to be a lot of different forgeries of this set out there!
re: Guatemala Forgery ?
i have been collecting Guatemala since 1998 and have never seen one..real or fake, there is certainly not a space for it in my Guatemala album. I would take one of either.