EUROPE by Albert Boerma

Peter Winter - a modern 'Sperati'

IN the 1980s German-born Peter Winter, owner of Pro Phil Forum', entered the philatelic market with replicas of rare German stamps ('Edition 85'). After taking over the Swiss-based House of Stamps he surprised the market in the 1990s with 'Edition 88'. Thereafter Herr Winter produced millions of copies of older German stamps variously marked as 'Facsimile', 'Replikat', 'Faux', 'Reprint’, or 'Copy'. The danger was, and still is, that middlemen erase the marks and trade the fake stamps as genuine ...

(Read the entire column in the November 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)