Greg Ioannou wrote:
I wonder how many other plate 77s have bad certificates because they are from plate 73? I guess the various British expertizing bodies would know. Do they reveal things like that if asked? Are researchers allowed access to their files?
Greg
Greg given the past records are not computerised, I'd doubt they really bother sharing the info.
ESPECIALLY when they issue idiotic opinions as they did here, that someone had glued "7s" cut out from other stamps to stamps onto all 3 stamps on the cover.
The stamp establishment is never terribly keen to accept on face value, something clearly valuable, they did not know existed before. Especially in the very conservative British stamp world.
Most especially a $500,000 type item, that would instantly be one of the rarest pieces in British Philately if certified as genuine.
Right now two certificates have been issued saying these plate numbers are faked, the latter Cert saying another plate has allegedly changed to read 77.
I feel fairly sure those "expert" views are both totally wrong - admittedly without viewing the cover myself.
The first view was plainly absurd, arguing essentially that someone had cut the number "7" out of other stamps, and pasted it over the second "7" on each stamp on cover.
A basic $20 hand held UV lamp would detect that if it were true! As would 20/20 eyesight I'd guess, or a human fingernail.
The other view in essence imputed the second original number had been hand-painted out in red, and a new 7 in white painted in on every stamp. Again the most rudimentary checking would reveal this, if it were the case.
Massive blow-ups of the paper fibres of this region have been taken, and they are illustrated in the article online, and show no such manipulation or alteration.
As you will see in the highly detailed reports here -
http://www.johfail.notlong.com - senior forensic Scientists and technical labs, using electron microscopes, and a million dollars of analytical equipment, see nothing of the sort.
Abed spent several £1,000's, and a great deal of time, and went out and got highly technical forensic reports on this cover.
The detailed forensic evidence appears to show those "Expert" views above are simply wrong.
The Forensic Institute, 10th August 2006 - "... there is no evidence of alteration. In summary, using these techniques we did not find evidence that could be established as tampering."
Reading Scientific Services Limited (RSSL), 1st February 2008 - "No evidence was found of fibre disruption (e.g. through deliberate tamper by scraping, cutting or adding fibres) during topographical examination of the second '7 diamond' regions."
The Forensic Science Service, 31st October 2006 - "I find no evidence that the plate numbers have been altered by cutting out portions of other stamps and pasting them onto the stamps examined here."
Rutgers University USA, 19th September , 2008, Gene S. Hall, Ph.D., Professor of Analytical Chemistry - "The identical nature of the inks of the three samples effectively rules out the finding that the ink had been painted in."
"Raman examination also confirmed that the pigment was the same in both the basic stamp and the second "7" area. There was no difference in the ink composition in the diamond areas surrounding the first and second "7" in the plate numbers."
As I have often written in my columns - the last word will NEVER be written in philately, and very major finds occur each year.
Keep an OPEN mind.
I am a great believer that closed or blinkered minds are often the biggest impediment to important new stamp discoveries being recognised for what they are.
Richard Debney, one of the members of the second "Expert" Committee involved, divulged his committee knew of the "forged" finding of the other, before making theirs, and sticks to his guns here -
http://www.ughoix.notlong.com
Abed need not be disheartened that a few "experts" have declared that the 3 stamps on his cover are "faked" - despite the clear written high tech forensic evidence he now has, that they are not tampered with in any way.
Sadly Committees are not always correct, even when the matter before them to rule upon is very simple.
All major philatelic discoveries have come from philatelists with open minds.