Detecting Forgery by Nickell Joe;

Author:Nickell, Joe; [Nickell, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.8. Pre-envelope letters were sealed with paste wafers or blobs of sealing wax. At left is an opened letter sheet showing the manner of folding. (At bottom center of the sheet is a piece of paper adhering to the wafer.) At upper right is a similar sheet folded into its packet, and below it is the reverse of another packet, showing how the wax seal was placed over the fold. Postmarks might be placed anywhere on either side of a letter packet, as shown by these examples.

While pre-envelope letters were usually sealed with wax or wafers (the latter placed under the flap) (figure 4.8), envelopes invited a variety of closing devices. Not common until the 1840s, envelopes were closed with mucilage; “motto seals” (small printed stickers occasionally used circa 1850); imitation seals made of embossed, glossy red paper; and other devices. The adhesive or “self-sealing” envelope (of about the late 1840s) eventually prevailed, but the clasp envelope (patented in 1879) also remains common.

Since the pre-envelope covers also bore postmarks (figure 4.8), they represent another challenge for the forger. Hofmann, for example, faked a postmark on the address panel of his folded “white salamander” letter but, as an expert reported, “the flatness, vagueness, and ink distribution of the postmark differ from genuine postmarks of the period.”70 For an address-leaf of a forged letter by Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Cosey created a postmark by using an inked bottle top to produce the circle, and printing the wording, “ALTON 7 CENTRAL ILLINOIS R. R. DEC. 6, 1847,” with a child’s rubber-stamp outfit. (In places the letters overlapped the circle, a tip-off that the postmark was produced in two stages.)71

After adhesive postage stamps were introduced (in Britain in 1840 and in the United States in 1847), cancellation devices joined postmarks on address leafs (and later envelopes). Eventually the two were combined, but early stamps were typically canceled with pen and ink (with an “X,” slash marks, etc.) and are known as “pen cancellations.” “Cork cancellations” (improvised from a cork stopper into the end of which a simple design, such as a cross, was cut) were also much used. “Target cancellations” (a simple design of concentric circles) were common throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. “Flag cancellations” were produced by canceling machines and first appeared in 1894.

In addition to the type of fakery produced by the likes of Cosey and Hofmann, forgers are now using phony postmarks and cancellations to create bogus postal collectibles. For example, a particular Confederate stamp is more valuable in used rather than mint condition (since it was produced at the end of the Civil War and few were actually used). By investing several dollars in an unused specimen, affixing it to an old envelope, and adding the address and fake postal marking, the forger has attempted to triple his investment.

Similarly, penny ante fakers are also enhancing the value of “patriotic covers.” (Common during the Civil War, these are small envelopes printed with decorative cachets, most commonly expressing proloyalist or antisecessionist sentiments.

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