This forgery was interesting in the fact that it was never intended that the public would get their hands on these forged booklets. It appears that the forger aimed the booklets at the philatelic world, where he knew collectors would be all too willing to snap up “genuine forgeries!”

The stamps and booklets were very well printed, although the colouring of the stamp differed from the original. The forger, whether it be on purpose or not, used an incorrect phosphor solution, and hence the normally blue stamps appeared with green bands. These bands were just about visible to the naked eye, where as usually they can only be seen under UV light.

The perforations were the right size 14x15, but were slightly wonky, either by design or by error. Examples of the booklets were snapped up and Royal Mail refused to comment at the time. I have a used example of the block of stamps taken directly from a booklet and the effects of the phosphor bands and perforations are very noticeable.

Once again, its one of those philatelic mysteries, the origins of which might one day be discovered.

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