NORFED Fakes
This was always going to happen once the prices got high enough. It's still a shame to see it and to see new collectors duped by it.
Unscrupulous former RCOs have been buying naked backs, stamping them, and selling them. Naked backs are bringing record money on Whatnot and eBay because that is what these people are buying to stamp. Many of these stamp and piece combinations do not appear in any of the books. Some hallmarks are catalogued on other pieces, which is part of what makes the recent ones hard to sort out.
What this does to the market is it reduces trust in all of the RCO stamps and hallmarks in general. Now a hallmark might just mean somebody stamped it recently so they could sell it.
From the pieces alone, it is hard to tell which of these is going on:
- Original stamps are still in someone's hands and are being used again.
- Those stamps are being passed around.
- Somebody had a new stamp made and is using it on whatever will sell.
Any of those is enough. People who were part of this history are flooding the market with newly stamped pieces for a quick buck. That greed has made everything suspect.
In my opinion, Ron Goodger and Charles Hempe are the clearest examples. The Live Free or Die moose and the LLD have been stamped onto all kinds of items, and those pieces are now extremely easy to find. The same pattern shows up with Mid-Michigan, Cass County Cash, Virginia, Texas, Missouri, Cabool, Willow Springs, the CH hallmark, and others.
I do not recommend buying anything from Ron Goodger, Charles Hempe, Noel Goff, or anyone else working this way.
You cannot tell whether you are getting an original or something they stamped to sell. If a seller cannot show the hallmark was on the piece before this recent wave, treat it as suspect.
If I missed a newly stamped piece, send it my way.
All images below are used under fair use for education and criticism.
Ron Goodger has published a response to this page on his own site. Read it and judge for yourself. If I have described a piece wrong, tell me and I will correct it here.
