A dangerous newly discovered counterfeit
of NVPH #48
by Dick Phelps
At first look it looks very good and the most noticeable reason to be suspicious is that if anything, it looks too good. The colors are a bit more intense than the real #48 but not really too far off. It looks like a real nice copy.
However, when high magnification is used to look at the details of the portrait considerable differences can be seen when compared to a real copy. Since #48 is so scarce a real copy may not be available for comparison, but you can use a nice copy of #45 or #46 for this purpose.
Notice the shading lines on the face and the shading lines in the background. Use magnification of at least 10X for this. The lines in general on the counterfeit would not look too bad if they were not compared to a real stamp. But compared to a real stamp they have a somewhat crude appearance.
The biggest mystery about this is that the counterfeit stamp has a very good looking Large Round cancel of Rotterdam. I can only guess that it is somehow also counterfeit, but very well done.
The only thing that I can find wrong with the cancel is that numeral 2 of the day number (20) is poorly formed.
Detail of counterfeit #48 Detail of real #48 Detail of real #46
Full view of all three.