Tag Archives: forgery

Faked, forged and counterfeit stamps at Library and Archives Canada

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By James Bone

You probably know that Library and Archives Canada holds an extensive number of postage stamps in its collections, but did you know that we also have a large number of faked, forged and counterfeit stamps?

The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but technically, a fake is an unofficial (not genuine) item, a forgery is a genuine item that has been altered unlawfully, and a counterfeit is a copy of a genuine item. Fakes, forgeries and counterfeits are made for various purposes, including defrauding the postal authority of revenue, tricking collectors who are eager to get a rarity at a too-good-to-be-true price, or succeeding in the intrinsic challenge of producing a convincing imitation. Within philately (the study of postage stamps and their uses), the intentional collection and study of fakes, forgeries and counterfeits helps to ensure that collectors are not being deceived.

Sometimes a counterfeit is easy to spot when placed beside the genuine article. Compare these two stamps from pre-Confederation Prince Edward Island depicting Queen Victoria. It should be obvious which is real and which is not (the one on the left, which has a portrait that is clearly of inferior quality).

A counterfeit beside a genuine Prince Edward Island Postage stamp, each with a portrait of Queen Victoria.

A counterfeit and a genuine Prince Edward Island Postage stamp featuring Queen Victoria (e001219314 and e001219313)

Often it is much more difficult to detect a fake, forgery or counterfeit, and some stamp collectors enthusiastically seek the challenge of finding fraudulent stamps. Three of the main collections with stamps of dubious provenance are the Rowcliffe F. Wrigley collection (R4595), the André Frodel collection (R3759) and the E.A. Smythies fonds (R3853). Each collection holds curiosities for philatelic researchers and collectors.

Rowcliffe “Roy” Wrigley (1885–uncertain) began collecting stamps as a child at age 10. He later became well known for publishing catalogues for collectors of postage stamps used by government departments, characterized by their perforation with the initials OHMS (On His Majesty’s Service) or overprinted with the letter G. Through unknown circumstances, Wrigley came to possess thousands of stamps with forged OHMS perforations: genuine stamps that had been carefully perforated with OHMS to deceive collectors. The problem for Wrigley was that he was also a well-known dealer of OHMS stamps; as a result, the Vancouver detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) took an interest in his activities. Though Wrigley was never proven in court to have done anything wrong, he agreed to transfer the collection by way of the RCMP to the former National Postal Museum, which defaced all of his stamps with a “counterfeit” mark.

Three one-cent Canada Postage stamps, each with a portrait of King George V, maple leaves and crowns, and forged OHMS perforations.

Canada Postage stamps featuring King George V, with forged OHMS perforations (MIKAN 164142). Photo: James Bone

The man who became known as André Frodel in Canada began his life as Andrzej Frodel, born in 1890 to a Polish family in Lviv, then part of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and now part of Ukraine. He worked at the Hungarian State Bank Note Company in the interwar years, during which he learned about lithographic printing processes and postage stamp paper stock. He joined the Polish Armed Forces fighting alongside the Western Allies during the Second World War. Frodel was resettled in Canada thereafter with a grant of farmland in Alberta. Within a few years, the farm had failed, and Frodel moved to British Columbia. Making use of his knowledge of printing, inks and stamps, he began to experiment in the creation of counterfeit stamps. As best we know, Frodel had no ill intentions and wanted only to demonstrate his skill, but in time those who acquired his works took the opportunity to resell them as genuine. A striking example is his counterfeit of Canada’s most famous stamp error: the St. Lawrence Seaway invert of 1959. The genuine error sells for more than $10,000, with a well-established number of copies in existence.

A counterfeit beside a genuine five-cent Canada Postage stamp, each with the St. Lawrence Seaway inverted centre error, including a maple leaf and an eagle.

A counterfeit and a genuine Canada Postage stamp featuring the St. Lawrence Seaway, with the inverted centre error (e010784418 and s002662k)

Frodel also made a type of fake stamp known as a fantasy: something that does not exist in genuine form but looks like it could.

A fantasy (fake) four-cent United States Postage stamp, with the St. Lawrence Seaway invert, including a maple leaf and an eagle.

A fantasy (fake) United States Postage stamp featuring the St. Lawrence Seaway, with invert, by André Frodel (e010784431)

Frodel died in poverty in 1963. At the time of his death, he lived as boarder under Lieutenant Colonel Frederick E. Eaton, who owned a stamp shop and was a stamp dealer for whom Frodel was probably making counterfeits and forgeries. Eaton likely had others working to produce materials for him to sell as genuine. Eventually, the RCMP began investigating Eaton and his shop. As with Wrigley, Eaton donated his fraudulent stamps to the National Postal Museum, but in doing so he appears to have falsely attributed all of them to Frodel, who being dead made for an excellent scapegoat. Many of these items were marked on the verso as being forgeries by Frodel to misdirect authorities and philatelic researchers.

A forgery beside a genuine five-cent Canada Postage War Tax overprint revenue stamp, each with a portrait of King George V, maple leaves and crowns.

A forged and a genuine Canada Postage War Tax overprint revenue stamp featuring King George V (e010783309 and s001014k)

Evelyn Arthur Smythies was born in 1885 of British parents in India and was later educated at the University of Oxford. Although he never lived in Canada, his wide-ranging philatelic collecting interests included a strong focus on the stamps of British North America. Smythies collected some of the highest-quality known fakes, forgeries and counterfeits. He spent years studying the details of different fakes, forgeries and counterfeits to identify their creators, but research ongoing to this day has questioned his attributions. Smythies died in 1975. Material from the E.A. Smythies collection is featured in our Unexpected! Surprising Treasures From Library and Archives Canada exhibition at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, until November 26, 2023.

A counterfeit beside a genuine six-pence New Brunswick Postage stamp, each with flowers and crowns.

A counterfeit and a genuine New Brunswick Postage stamp (e001219080 and e001219065)

The cat-and-mouse game of making and detecting fakes, forgeries and counterfeit stamps is still ongoing, both for users of the postal system and for collectors. In recent years, one expert consultant for Canada Post estimated that counterfeit stamps defraud the postal system of millions of dollars annually. For collectors, the risk of unknowingly purchasing fraudulent stamps is mitigated by authentication services: items are submitted to a committee of experts who specialize in identifying the false from the genuine articles. By maintaining a collection of known faked, forged and counterfeit stamps, Library and Archives Canada is able to assist in this highly specialized field.

Additional resources

James Bone is a philatelic and art archivist in the Visual and Sound Archives section at Library and Archives Canada.

Expect the Unexpected!

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By Forrest Pass

What do Inuit mapmakers, German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, a notorious Italian stamp forger and Soviet spies have in common? Their works are all represented in the collections at Library and Archives Canada. These artifacts are also showcased in Unexpected! Surprising Treasures From Library and Archives Canada, which opens at the Canadian Museum of History on Thursday, December 8, 2022. This new exhibition gives curious visitors a chance to see, first-hand, many intriguing items that they might not expect to find at Canada’s national library and archives.

The exhibition features some 40 original documents, maps, photographs, rare books and works of art. Regular readers of this blog will know that researchers and staff are always coming across surprises in the collection. A few of the items displayed in Unexpected! are perennial favourites. Others are new finds, the never-before-exhibited results of research into the unusual stories that library and archival collections can reveal.

A handwritten document on lined paper, with some words in black ink scratched out in red ink.

A secret agent receives instructions from his handlers. The delivery of this and other Soviet espionage documents to Canadian authorities in 1945 helped to start the Cold War. (e011316511_s1)

These stories are clustered around three themes. The first, Wonders, presents artifacts that delighted or intrigued their audiences when they were created, and they continue to do so today. Visitors will discover how a manuscript composition by Beethoven ended up in Canada. They can experience an 18th-century version of virtual reality. They may also contemplate two contrasting visions of the Arctic: one, the product of an imaginative European cartographer who had never visited the region, and the other, the work of two Inuit mapmakers with deep connections to the land.

A street with pink, green and beige buildings, soldiers, a dog, and a horse and carriage.

Perspective views, like this imaginary street scene in the city of Québec, appear to be three-dimensional when viewed through a device called a zograscope. The exhibition features a reconstructed zograscope, enabling visitors to experience virtual reality, 1770s-style. (e011309357)

In the second theme, Secrets, Unexpected! explores how and why people keep secrets, and how they share secrets with those who need to know. Visitors can crack a coded love letter, ponder the rich symbolism of a centuries-old masonic ritual painting, and find out why the Dominion Archivist once mused (or “mew-sed”?) about putting cats on the government payroll.

The final theme, Mysteries, presents some unresolved puzzles. Here, visitors can pore over the contents of a UFO investigation file, or come face to face with the rare “Fool’s Cap Map,” printed in the 1500s and perhaps the most mysterious map ever created.

Two yellow stamps placed diagonally on a page. They both have a blue ink stamp.

One of these 1851 New Brunswick postage stamps is a forgery. Can you spot the fake? (e011309360 and e011309361)

The stories that these artifacts tell can be funny, thought-provoking or simply curious. What links them all is that each artifact, when you scratch beneath its surprising surface, reveals something important about the past. There are good reasons why they have found their way into the collections at Library and Archives Canada.

This is the latest in a series of exhibitions developed in partnership between Library and Archives Canada and the Canadian Museum of History. As the curator for Unexpected!, I have had the privilege and pleasure of collaborating on this project with a multidisciplinary team of exhibition and collections professionals from both institutions. In addition to providing the venue, the museum has contributed creative development expertise and a scenographic approach that recalls the look and feel of mid-century mysteries and spy thrillers. The museum’s technicians also took up the challenge of constructing several interactive elements that will enhance visitors’ understanding and appreciation of the original artifacts.

Unexpected! Surprising Treasures From Library and Archives Canada is at the Canadian Museum of History until November 26, 2023. Watch this blog as well as Library and Archives Canada’s social media channels in the coming weeks and months to learn more about the astonishing treasures on display.

Forrest Pass is a curator in the Exhibitions team at Library and Archives Canada.