Reperfing of Stamps


>It is getting harder to find the straight edge stamp, the more valuable it becomes the higher the likelihood that it will be reperfed. Perf. 11's turn into perf 10's, imperfs acquire perfs becoming 'jumbo' or 'gem' examples. And of course the favourite, getting rid of perf imperfections. The Washington Franklins are the most reperfed issue of all.

Reperf machines used to be commonly avialable in Europe, Germany being the producer of most. They are precision made flat pieces of steel with ground sharp teeth. They come in every perf size known to man. The forger places the stamp face up on a sheet of transparent plastic. A sound stamp is then placed on the stamp to be reperfed, but in a position that shows the new perforation line, see the illustrations below. The steel tool is carefully fitted in the holes of the good stamp and then a doorstop type rubber mallet is then placed over it and with a rubber mallet each hole is punched out, one at a time. One ebay seller who was caught two years back sold thousands of these, he even distributed pictures of his machine to his friends, yet amazingly his feedback was 98% positive.

So how do you detect a reperfed stamp?

Look at one side of the stamp and ask yourself

- are the perf tips rough or flat? They should have the appearance of torn edges. Not rubbed (achieved by using sandpaper) or straight
- are the holes perfectly round? US perforations are not round but vary from imperfec circles to ovals
- are the holes shallow? If one sides holes are shallow than another, then start to think reperf
- are the perfs the same size as the other three sides? Take a perf guage and look at the exact distribution, it should match
- how do the perfs line up with the opposite side? Compare it to the alignement of other stamps of that issue, sometimes they always do, sometimes they never line up.
- is the stamp narrower or shorter than the your reference copy? This should raise a red flag, look more closely at those holes.

Stamps which are torn from sheets, which means most of the stamps that are featured on this site, have a the appearance of being torn at the edge of the stamp, a common reperf will not have this effect. However the skilled forger will sandpapers the edges of the perfs to give torn appearance. What the reperfer cannot do is prevent the stamp from getting narrower or shorter, in which case compare the size to a normal or good stamp. Another common giveaway is that the perfs will line up with the opposite perfs when in the issue they either typicaly do or dont.

Another way to spot reperfs is that some issues are prone to having blind perfs, an the absence of some should raise a flag. Uneven holes, holes aligned at a diagonal and unusually large margins where there is an imperf variety of the issue. Lastly, sandpapering the edge perfs is a skilled job, most will rough the perfs up to the side and this will not give the appearance of a pulled perf but more of a rubbed edge perf, with no loose paper fibres hanging out of the perf. Lastly look at the depth of the perf holes, almost a quarter of reperfs have shallow holes, where the forger has tried to save paper or tried to avoid cutting into the stamp design.

There is one more form of reperfing, that is to take a proof stamp and convert it into its more valuable postal cousin by adding perfs, which is easy to detect. The card stock of proofs will take minutes to sink in watermark fluid whilst the regular stamp, if floated on top will sink in a second or two.

Below is a guide to the more common methods of reperfing.


Repararing a short perf is done by making the bottom of the short perf the top of the new perf, thereby losing minimum height. If well done, this reperf can be hard to detect.


Here is an example of making a 11 perf into a twelve. This means completely removing all the perfs and having the perf tips touch the bottom of the perf holes of the stamp to be repaired. The corner serves as the rightmost perf.


You will have to excuse my dotted lines, they make for some short perfs. Where there are a series of short perfs the forger will align the new perf tips with the old perf tips, losing as little as the stamp as possible.


A pulled perf is more problematic, here the new perf line has to be lowered considerably and a new corner perf constructed.


The corner perf that has been blunted requires major surgery, with not only the removal of the old perfs but a considerable chunk of margin.