Last July, I wrote an article about fake sheets of the unissued 1940 very rare Korea Christmas/TB seal that were being sold on eBay. The seller did state that they were forgeries by “Werner”. Now there are four more fakes blocks of very high value Korea and South Korea stamps being sold by the same seller on eBay and again the dealers is stating they were made by “Werner”.
These fakes are the three high values of the Korea definitives 1900-01 Plumb Blossoms set, Scott 31-33, Korean Postage Stamp Catalogue (KPSC) 24-26 and the South Korea 1948 President Rhee stamp, Scott 90, KPSC C22. If they were genuinie they would be very rare and very valuable.
The rest of this article is for KSS members only. Please login. Not a member yet? Join the KSS now, giving you access to ALL articles and downloads on the KSS website.
I had submitted a complaint to eBay about this seller, citing the violation that some of the listings did not include the replica/reproduction notice as part of the listing pictures. Apparently the seller has not updated all their listings. But my main point to eBay was that traditional practice is to mark the back of the stamps as replicas/reproductions… If eBay is no longer requiring this, they are opening up a can of worms for themselves by other buyers breaking up the sheets and then trying to sell off singles without the required notice. Why cause problems for themselves? Needless to say, I have not heard back from eBay. While they won’t fool advanced collectors and some intermediate collectors, they are still a pain to weed out of collections/accumulations if they work their way into them. It ends up being a waste of my time and for other collectors, too.
Thanks for your comment Khy. You are correct, although they include the slip saying they are forgeries, unlike many dealers who sell forgeries and mark them on the reverse as such, these have no markings on the reverse of the stampsI purchased them just so I could write this article and warn our members. Bob
I will add that the slip claiming “Wernerities began to be popular around 2000” is probably as bogus as the stamps are fakes. Although I’m not an expert in forgeries/fakes, I’ve got a decent working knowledge as a WW collector, and I’ve never heard of “Werner” until this past year. None of the people in the other stamp forums I participate has every heard of them before 2024 either. They sort of just appeared out of nowhere past 2 years. As far as I’m concerned, the claim of originating around the year 2000 is just an advertising gimmick to try to establish some sort of legitimacy. I guess they could argue that 2020’s is “around 2000”. I’d like to see some sort of proof by the seller that these were created and sold to the collecting public at the turn of the century before I can believe that slip of paper. The seller’s eBay account started in 2016. 1300+ of the 1900+ are from past 12 months.
Hi again, Khj. I believe you are correct about these being recent and not produced back in 2000. When I was researching background for writing the article, I couldn’t find anything about “Werner”, either. I do not believe that eBay is actually worried about these as the buyers are on their own when it come to forgeries or fake item. Bob
more and more forged stamps appeared from this seller, not only Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Italy, UK, Russia and many more countries are victims. They can just add these into the usual collection and make the whole country collection sold by much higher prices. And unfortunately, auction house can not certify these before putting on sale.