Talk:Philatelic fakes and forgeries

False cancellations
Cancellations are often applied to genuine, unused stamps to make them appear to be postally used and thus to enhance their value. In some cases, these cancellations are contrived, but in other cases genuine cancelling devices have been used (even by postal employees). Cancelled-to-order (cto) stamps are a case in point; they often result when a postal admimistraion wants to dispose of remainders and increase their revenue. "Favor" cancels are similar; they enhance the value for collectors. Conversely, the discussion in the text implies that a false cancellation implies a philatelic forgery; but that does not mean the underlying stamp is bogus! Fconaway (talk) 06:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The foregoing comments are directed to the following text:"If a stamp has a forged cancellation, it necessarily is a philatelic forgery since it was obviously made for sale to collectors, not to be used to send a letter. [5] If the cancellation is genuine, it is likely a postal forgery, but not necessarily, since sometimes forgers have used genuine cancellation devices to 'cancel' forged stamps. [6]" Fconaway (talk) 07:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good you noticed this. It definitely need rewriting, preferably with citations. Indeed there are genuine stamps with forged cancellations and genuine cancellations on forged stamps. CTOs and favor cancels are a shady area that should be clarified too. Will you do it? ww2censor (talk) 14:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly I am willing to do this, but unfortunately I don't have much available time. I've been making a few edits on the fly, which are about all I can manage just now.  I'm hoping to see some daylight within two months or so from now.  Incidentally, genuine covers are often found with genuine stamps which do not belong on them, another kind of postal fakery.Fconaway (talk) 06:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move
The title of this article, "Philatelic fakes and forgeries," is not accurate as it includes postal forgeries, and philatelic forgeries, i.e., forgeries to deceive stamp collectors, and other types like propaganda forgeries. I suggest moving the article to "Stamp fakes and forgeries." Ecphora (talk) 17:24, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I understood it to mean philatelic as in relating to philately, not forgeries solely intended to deceive collectors. On a wider definition it would include, for instance, faked pre-stamp postal history, so I think I oppose a rename to stamps. What about "Fakes and forgeries in philately". Philafrenzy (talk) 17:36, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The article used to be called "Counterfeit stamps". Perhaps we can leave the title as is, to cover philatelic forgeries, both stamp and pre-stamp, but carve out the  postal forgeries in a different article called "Counterfeit stamps."  There is a corresponding article Counterfeit money. Ecphora (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * This will only end up in confusion. How will we know which were philatelic and which postal? Philafrenzy (talk) 23:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That is not a problem. The vast majority of fakes are philatelic, many of which come with fake cancellations. Postal forgeries are few and typically have genuine cancellations on them.  The literature is very good on distinguishing between them.  For example, there are several well known fake US stamps that were postal forgeries. Ecphora (talk) 23:19, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I suppose we could have "Philatelic forgeries" and "Postal forgeries" (the use of fake seems superfluous) but could this not simply be dealt with as sections in the same article? Philafrenzy (talk) 01:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes it's possible to address both in one article, but that gets us back to correcting the title. The more I think about it, however, the more it seems that Counterfeit stamps should be its own article. Counterfeit stamps are different from philatelic fakes as they are made to defraud the postal system (instead of collectors), are (seriously) illegal (and prosecuted) and are the analog of counterfeit currency. As for "fakes", we should retain that word. The literature uses "forgeries" and "fakes" pretty much interchangeably for philatelic items. But "fake stamps" also can refer to pure fantasy issues, where the term "forgery" would not be appropriate. I'll put together a separate article and people can see how they like it. Ecphora (talk) 02:01, 9 January 2013 (UTC)