Ballot stamp is a fake, says local expert

A Newport Beach firm determined Monday that a rare stamp found on a Florida absentee ballot from the November election — which could have been worth up to $500,000 — is not authentic.

The fake stamp was made to look like a 1918 postal printing goof known as the “inverted Jenny” because the biplane on it was printed upside down. It was examined in Florida by Randy Shoemaker, senior expert at Professional Stamp Experts, a Newport Beach company that authenticates stamps.

It only took him a matter of seconds to see the stamp wasn’t real. While an original would have been printed on an engraved plate that sets the ink on top of the paper, the ink on the fake stamp had soaked into the paper more. Also, the lines of the design were cruder, and the blue ink was the wrong shade, Shoemaker said.

Of the 100 inverted Jenny stamps known to have been printed, the whereabouts of 94 have been traced, Shoemaker said.

“The only slim possibility was that this was one of the four or so that haven’t been found yet,” Professional Stamp Experts President Mike Sherman said, but a closer examination showed it was simply a representation of the inverted Jenny stamp stuck to an envelope with tape.

Had the stamp been real, it could have been worth between $150,000 and $500,000, depending on its condition, Sherman said.

Whoever sent the fake stamp may have committed postal fraud, but Shoemaker said there was no return address on the envelope.

Even if officials knew who sent the fake stamp, “If you spent more than 24 cents to prosecute, you’d be in the hole,” Sherman said. “Obviously, someone wanted a little bit of attention, and they got it.”

Interestingly, the fake stamp was on the envelope with some genuine, but not rare, stamps from the 1930s, Shoemaker said. Stamp counterfeiting is not uncommon, but it’s usually done by people who sell the stamps as postage, and the phony stamps aren’t potentially worth six figures, he said.

Professional Stamp Experts is part of an umbrella company, Collectors Universe, which also authenticates and values coins, sports cards, autographs and gemstones.