HOW TO EASILY IDENTIFY THE EARLY STAMPS OF ECUADOR 1865 TO 1872
by Tom Hoke
Most stamp collectors who buy on the internet do not have sufficient information to evaluate the stamp being offered. The early stamps of Ecuador were imperforate, and according to the literature there has been a lucrative market for the last 125+ years in creating copies to sell to unsuspecting stamp collectors worldwide. With a high demand for the first stamps of Ecuador, most of the early stamps have been copied over and over to the point where there are possibly more fake and counterfeit stamps than originals, and the trick and trade business proliferates.
The information gleaned from The American Philatelist article was interesting, but from a practical standpoint it would not be possible, for example, to count all the pearls in the circle surrounding the coat of arms on the MEDIO REAL and UNREAL stamps, or for a stamp collector to count the number of rays projecting from the sun in the center of the coat of arms, especially on a blurred and out of focus image. Only the color and the clarity seemed to be important possible clues as to whether the stamp was an original or a copy. What I needed was original copies of the early stamps of Ecuador for comparison purposes.
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