Japan

Thursday, April 20, 1871.

Imperforate, native laid paper, no watermark, engraved.

Issued without gum. Denomination printed in black.
Description	# printed	# issued	Scott #
48 mon brown	?	400,000 total for all values	1
100 mon blue			2
200 mon vermilion			3
500 mon blue green			4

All issue quantities are approximate.

The stamps were printed using two plates for the Dragon and one plate for each value. Each plate is made up of 40 slightly different, individually engraved, images.

The issue date was taken from the Scott catalog. Other authorities have used Wednesday March 1, 1871.

The first issue was printed until February 1872 and remained valid until November 30, 1889.

Counterfeits are plentiful, but according to Frank Aretz's book "Know Your Stamps" about 90% of the genuine stamps have a secret printers mark in the lower left. The reason it is not 100% may be related to the fact that all stamps on a plate of 40 were engraved individually.

The secret printers mark.

Genuine	Forgery

A few of the characteristics distinguishing genuine stamps from forgeries are:

The genuine stamp shows a secret mark of two tiny dots instead of a solid line as the central downstroke of the lower Greek letter (key) in the lower left corner. The forgery has no such mark.
The central characters, the denomination, in the forgery measure 9.5 mm high instead of 10.5 as in the genuine stamp.
The Greek key border is more perfectly formed in the forgery than in the genuine stamp.
The design of the genuine stamp measures 19.75 mm square. The forgery measures 19.5mm x 19.0mm

It could be worth your while to visit Japan-Japan if you want more information on Japanese philately.

This page was last modified on Monday, 03-Nov-2003 15:44:43 PST