Naval Covers Fakes Frauds and Forgeries

Naval Covers Fakes, Forgeries and Frauds

As long as there have been collectors, there have been those who have manufactured articles meant to deceive a collector or have manufactured not quite genuine articles meant to please a collector. Depending on the intent behind the manufacturing, these articles are known as fakes and forgeries. Many hobbies run into fakes and forgeries. Some collector groups do an excellent job of documenting these articles to inform members. Sometimes the information is well known by current collectors but not documented and the next generation of collectors must learn the hard way.

In 2007 the directors of the USCS had extensive conversations about the sale of fraudulent material to a member. A decision was made to run a series of educational articles in the USCS monthly Log to document known fake, forged and fraudulent naval covers. The resulting series ran monthly in the February 2008 – February 2009 Logs. The authors of these articles, Bob Rawlins, David Kent, John Young, Frank Hoak III, Lawrence Brennan, Rich Hoffner and Mike Vining were subsequently awarded the USCS Stanton Honeyman writing award for the 2008 Log year.