Philately - The Fiction Connection
The Mystery Box book is the proud winner of a Silver Medal awarded by the Chicago Philatelic Society CHICAGOPEX Literature Exhibit
Read the Book Review by Barbara Kinne of the APS American Philatelist
During the 1980's the Haitian government supposedly issued a number of postage stamps reproducing the famous American bird paintings of John James Audubon.
After a number of these items appeared on the philatelic market, the Haitian government repudiated the items as not being valid postage stamps. Such items as the Haitian Audubons are most accurately classified as:
a) cinderellas
b) fakes
c) phantoms
d) forgeries
If you answered (c) phantoms, then you are not likely to confuse iron pyrites for the real thing, for a phantom is a bogus item.
However, if you answered (a) cinderellas, you are still correct in a broader sense. The distinction between the two is that, although all phantom stamps are by definition cinderellas, not all cinderellas are phantoms. According to the Cinderella Stamp Club in England, cinderellas include all back-of-the-book items such as bogus stamps, charity issues, advertising and exhibition labels, forgeries, and private local stamps.
A fake is a stamp that is in some sense fraudulent, a regummed stamp being a good example.
A forgery is an item that is intended to masquerade as an existing, valid postage stamp. As for the fellows who produced the Audubon bogus stamps or phantoms, at last report they had all migrated to Haitian prisons.
