Update 2/3/2012
“filatelia_de_la_habana” changed his ebay id to “filateliadelahabana-punto-com” and continues selling his remaining fake Lithuania covers.Update 9/2/2011
“filatelia_habana” changed his ebay id to “filatelia_de_la_habana” and continues selling fake covers.Update 8/5/2011
“filatelia_habana” continues selling fake covers.Update 7/5/2011
Vitaly Geyfman confirms that ALL 1941 occupation covers are fakes too.Update 7/4/2011
Tobias Huylmans (BPP expert) just informed us that ALL but one Memel covers are fakes too.
I just wanted to post an advisory warning about the recent explosion of fakes and forgeries of classic Lithuania covers appearing daily on eBay. A large number of suspicious postal history items (like the one shown below) is currently being offered by eBay seller “filatelia_habana”.
We urge collectors of postal history extreme caution when purchasing from this seller. We work hard at identifying these fakes and forgeries and posting to our online “fakes are forgeries” database found here.
filatelia_habana is not new to selling fakes. They sell extremely good forgeries of the Spanish derecho judiciales stamps. And there’s another seller from Spain, Continental Subastas Filatelicas S.L., he has a tremendous stock of Lithuania 1941 overprints. From Germany there’s an extreme amount of fakes being sold that are coming up on the American market. I am not an expert in this issue, but it looks like it’s time for all of the experts in the field of Lithuania to come up with some type of handbook, to explain the characteristics of the originals. This is going to turn a lot of people off who end up buying fakes believeing they are real. Not good for the hobby.
Keep up the good work!