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How do you turn a low value definitive into a high value rarity?

1. Make sure you have friends in the right places i.e. the Michel catalogue.

2. Fly to the Comoro Islands and overprint a batch of low value definitives with the desired markings.

3. Convince one of the biggest stamp dealers in Germany, who specialises in sport, trains and space, that this is a legitimate issue.

4. Get the stamps listed in a catalogue i.e. the Michel catalogue, at ridiculous prices.

5. Sit back and watch the money roll in from unsuspecting collectors.

These bogus overprints are listed in the Michel catalogue and only the Michel catalogue.

click on images for large versions

Yvert & Tellier and Stanley Gibbons do not even mention them. Scott makes mention of only one of the stamps (James Cook) not as a catalogue entry and with no price purely to protect the American dealer, Herrick Stamp Co., who had sold the stamps to collectors at grossly inflated prices.

In fact, the values of the stamps are inflated to a degree not seen since post-war Germany!

The set of 2 values with the Voyager overprint, face values of 30f & 50f (total value 1.6¢ American), is catalogued by Michel at €300 ($390)!

The murky waters that surround the Michel catalogue just get murkier. We can understand now why some of these dealers are on the board of ASCAT. If you are a friend of Wolfgang Maier it seems you can get anything catalogued as a genuine postage stamp. We wonder what these people could do with toilet paper.

Whatever they did we are sure that it would appear in the Michel catalogue as a valuable rarity.