It has been suggested earlier that Forgery 13 may in fact be a Saatjian reprint despite the absence of a ray in the 2 o’clock position around the right hand sunburst. Examination of a plating quality reproduction of a complete sheet of the 40c Saatjian reprint does confirm that the stamp at position 92 is missing the 2 o’clock ray to the right hand sunburst.

We do know, however, that the stone for printing the 40c value was derived from an intermediate stone of four transfers taken from the 20c value where the 20 had been erased and 40 substituted in its place. This block was in turn transferred 30 times to the printing stone by commencing at the top left hand corner and working to the right to give rise to a double row of 24 stamps in the configuration,

                                                                                    1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2
                                                                                    3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4

and so on down the stone. On this basis stamp 92 will be located at position 8 on row 8 of the plate and should be transfer type 4.

To explore this possibility reproductions of stamp 92 and Forgery 13 are illustrated below.

Examination of the two stamps does in fact confirm that both display the broadened upper portion of the vertical of the E of SUEZ characteristic of the type 4 transfer.


Stamp position 92 (below)




Forgery 13 (below)




There are many other points of similarity between our Forgery 13 and the stamp at position 92 on the original stone and I think we can safely conclude that we are here looking at a variety of the Saatjian reprint that occurs once in every 120 examples.