RAF Cachet WW2 RN Cover

[Peter Harvey]

Hi,

I would appreciate anyone's thoughts on the attached cover. Plain cover, nothing on reverse with tombstone dated 24/9 only (hard to read initials). The red/pink cachet I have not seen before, the border is very similar to a number of civil censor cachets - any clues?

Thank you.

Peter

[Frank Schofield]

Peter

I was shown 2 similar items a short time ago

Personnel opinion  COMPLETE FAKE

Frank Schofield

[Nick Colley]

Hi, guys, yes, I agree with Frank in that the RAF mark was probably added at a (much ?) later data by an enthusiastic postal history practitioner - either having a laugh at the rest of us, or trying to add some false value to a very mundane cover of almost no value.

It seems to be analogous to one or two other tems I've seen. I wrote them up, with the late Ken Sandford, in the Journal, ca.1998-1999. I'll endeavour to find the article and report back.

Perhaps a prudent - even wise - course of action would be to remove them from the market and put them in (permanent) quarantine. That's what I did with a couple of similasr items I was offered a few years ago. Regrettably they were rather expensive, but we shouldn't tolerate nonsense like this knocking around the market giving the hobby and its practitioners a bad name.

chrs
Nick

[Nick Colley]

It was, in fact, Journal 195, Spring 1988. I reported an additional manifestation of these scallywag covers in Journal 217, Autumn 1993.

I draw your attention to the attached.

N

[Nick Colley]

And this one, too.

N

[Nick Colley]

oops.

[Michael Dobbs]

Frank & Nick

Many thanks for your info.  Just to clarify, the covers are genuine, but the additional RAF censor markings are highly suspicious and we consider them to be bogus.  The ones illustrated thus far are all RN censored covers with the additional suspicious RAF censor.  Nick referred to his article in Newsletter No 195 - I have scanned this and attached it as a pdf.  This extends the use to Army censored covers as well.  This thread now brings together a detailed listing of such marks and is a good reference point for anyone wanting (or reporting additional) information.

I agree with Nick that the best thing is to take such covers out of circulation (maybe even destroy them, but maybe thats going a bit too far !).

Mike  :)

[Peter Harvey]

Thank you all, confirmed my thoughts, hence I put the item here for comment. I have four others purchased from Ken Sandford back in the 1980's although they all have the words PASSED BY CENSOR similar to those shown by Nick. This is different as the person creating them used a more elaborate hand stamp, however clearly does not fit with the RN cover.

Interested to see the examples from Nick.... thanks.

Peter