François
Fournier (d. 1917) is considered to have been the greatest and most
prolific philatelic forger of his era. This is the last edition of
his price list, originally published in 1914, and listing all of
the 3671 different forged stamps he sold, arranged by country and
with prices in Swiss Francs. This is a very useful reference for
the philatelist, providing either a watch list of the varieties for
which Fournier forgeries exist, or catalogue to assist the
collector of these facsimiles. There are also advertisements for
Fournier´s ´Philatelic Clinic´, a notorious stamp repair factory,
which allegedly had some 2500 clients by 1913.
The actual
list is in French, although it is easy for the non-French speaker
to understand, giving the country, date of issue, face value,
colour etc., and the 1914 sale price of each variety (see below). A
free French-English dictionary is included to help. This price list
is followed by Fournier´s ´terms and conditions´, details of his
´Philatelic Clinic´, and 20 pages of customer reviews. These
interesting longer sections of text appear in several languages,
reflecting the global reach of his business: English, German,
French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
There are also a small number of illustrations in this
book. To help distinguish between the genuine stamp and the
forgeries by Fournier (and others) we recommend the illustrations
and descriptions found in the books by Fernand Serrane. These
are available in the ´Forged Stamps´ category of our shop, click
here >>>
.
Part of page
9 is shown in the image below, giving the first 2 sets of forged
stamps on the price-list.
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