Fakes

Welcome to April Graves-Minton's Fakes Page! 

Here you may find evidence of fraud, theft, and outright fake products that have been or are being sold to the public every day! As a collector of various items including stamps, I have found that there are so many fake products on the market that many authenticators, appraisers, and collectors are confused or duped into believing they have the real deal!

What I offer here is personal insight to the possibility that you may have been a victim of fraud when purchasing supposed real items, especially online. Because of my diligent research and digging, I am shocked by the blatant, in-your-face RINGS of thieves in this country and others! I am a collector. I want the real product when I spend my hard-earned money to indulge my interests. You do, too.

You know, it isn't just up to me to ferret out and jail these mobsters, it is the duty of every good citizen across the globe to alert the authorities when they encounter fake products. Of course, it has been par for the course that many times the thieves have already bought their way into law enforcement and simply get a slap on the wrist as punishment.

So, what can you do to take down the theft rings and assure that you have a quality real product or item that you can enjoy and hand down for inheritance and prosperity to your loved ones? Closely examine the products or items listed on my websites as I scour the globe for the best to offer my customers and clients. I am NOT an antiques appraiser; however, I believe that my readers can see my earnest and open attempt giving value-added items that I think are the real thing. If they are not, please make sure to use my contact form to send pictures and evidence that my items are fake. 

Sometimes, I may make a mistake and hope that you will alert me so that I may adjust my pages. What I do here on this page is to offer my insight and ability to zero in on the root cause of problems or to help others learn how to spot fakes in their lives and companies. If you find something fake you think my readers need to know about a certain product, service, or company (MUST HAVE GOOD PROOF), then I will list it for others to buyer beware! You may also comment below your findings, but please do not provide links. They will be deleted.

The best thing that you can do is to STOP BUYING FROM THOSE COMPANIES WHO ARE PROMOTING FAKE PRODUCTION OR SELLING OF FAKE PRODUCTS!! Focus on downsizing for a time your needs, wants, and especially whims as a consumer. Give yourself a little breathing room as you step back from any impulse buying or that feeling of I have to have it now syndrome. The advertisements are meant to keep you and your children HOOKED in a constant state of confused necessity. Let me tell you, nine times out of ten, you do not need, want, or even whim the item, product, or services offered in bombardments of your senses all day, every day.

You can read more about my insight and read my solutions found on my other website MoonEagle Security. Together, we can cut off the root of evil. Money is good. It is NOT evil. It is evils root, which I am pulling up as I speak! Below, you will find a few web-shots of very curious advertisements and offerings to the public. How did they manage to buy in bulk all those stamps from 1970? Isn't that illegal, even for the stamp-maker? Yes, it is.

Notice: All prices are subject to change without notice and immediate accepted Buy Now offers to me will terminate any bidding procedures after I receive buyer's funds! I will give notice of pending buy now or the end of any items for sale on my websites. Bidding may last one month or may last up to a year! Some of the items may be Previews of my RARE AND REAL MUSEUM!! If so, then that item will display a Not For Sale message!

Links To Other Pages:

FISHING (This link takes you to my collectible fishing tackle page that contains - scroll down toward bottom - a very rare Wal-Mart Sticker on a box of sinkers that is also rare! The box itself and the paper inside the box are also rare! Very interesting! Very collectible!)

Item Number: USA1000

Freedom To Speak USA 2 cent Stamp

Museum Preview Not For Sale!

This Freedom to Speak Out 2 cent U.S. Stamp is the real one. I bought it many years ago from a dealer booth in a flea market. It was in a Stamp Traveler Album that had belonged to a man who traveled the world collecting stamps. Many times, he would simply have them cancelled out without gluing them to correspondence. Other times, he collected used stamps he found on post cards or letters or in other places around the world. A real stamp collector knows intimately the various true markers of an authentic stamp. The back of the stamp is most times more important than the front as it allows someone in the know to determine whether it is real or fake. The backside of this stamp shows where the original collector had placed it on or in an envelope during his travels. It was brand new at the time, but he must have had to pull it off the envelope and some of the envelope adhered to the backside of the new stamp. The lower left corner of the stamp back shows unused gum area. The edges do, too. You be the judge. 

Below you will see the various pictures of my real stamp, then you will see the evidence of the fake stamp displayed online as a Webshot picture and at the Smithsonian Institution National Postal Museum as the real stamp. I searched online to find out if mine is real or not because usually USA stamps are not as expensive as some older foreign stamps that I have. And what came up was a link to a stamp like mine located at the Smithsonian Institute. But as I read about their stamp and what to look for authenticating one as real, I was disturbed as I upsized both stamps in magnification beside each other and shockingly their stamp is not printed on green paper, but mine is! Also, the artist on my stamp has "feet" on the lettering that theirs does not! Another clue is that the 2 in the 2c is checked and bleeds into the A in the USA lettering! Wow! I have the real deal and they do not! Check it out below for yourself!

My RARE AND REAL MUSEUM Stamp: Year Produced: 1977

Below you will see my Webshot of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum webpage showing the same stamp as mine above. I thought that my stamp might be the fake one when I saw the supposed real one they say is an original listed on their prestigious website. I was wrong. Now, I am not trying to embarrass the Smithsonian Institution or its vast resources of authenticators, but seriously, if you are even a little bit curious about your own collection based on what they say is real, I think that my investigation and explanation telling the difference between each stamp should be proof enough that you may be a victim of crime. You see, this website and many of my other websites is dedicated to exposing the crap in your life so that you may decide together we should rise above the users.

Please note the above closeups of various parts of my real stamp. The green is even better noticeable in better light than it shows above, but you can clearly see the BROWN spots. The brown spots are not red because of the green paper! I actually went to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum website to compare my stamp to theirs. I thought at first that MY stamp looked FAKE, but upon better light and magnification I saw the lumpy woven paper and it is GREEN! The Smithsonian stamp like this one is NOT Green paper! My stamp is aged, but it has more distinct and accurate measures of back when these stamps were made. Their stamp is too perfect and does not have the artistic qualities of mine. You be the judge and comment about it or send an email via my contact form.

WEBSHOTS BELOW:

Okay. Where is the backside of this stamp below that looks nothing like the color of my real one? 1977 gum looks different than gum on a stamp reproduced in massive numbers. Also, the stamp below white area is too white to be from the year 1977! Fake Freedom To Speak Out 2cent U.S. Stamp Webshots below: Focus on the FREE in FREEDOM the E's are too perfect and the number 2 with checked pattern bleeds over onto the A. Also, my real stamp has defined feet on ends of the letters because the artist that drew and colored the real ones likes tails or feet on his or her letters. The color is also not correct on this fake stamp either. My stamp is the original red, while theirs is pink. The reason for this phenomenon is the paper used for each stamp. They cannot reproduce the correct color because the paper used to produce the real thing is long gone! The color pigment changes depending on the type of paper, how old it is, how thick it is, and the chemicals used to make it! 

The thieves know that collectors look for hairy perforations helping them determine real from fake. But, as I have pointed out here, a strong magnifying glass or jewelers loop comes in handy identifying discrepancies in products! For real collectors, quality matters! Please visit my other pages in the menu to see or purchase my RARE AND REAL MUSEUM Stamps or other items from around the world! Yes, some of the prices may seem steep, however, they are the real deal and worth the investment as they can do nothing but climb in value!

Please note that many of my stamps are not even on the internet search engines - not even on eBay for sale! - Nowhere to be found stamps = Ghost Stamps - I reserve the right to list for what I want as a collector base reserve procedure bid price! My choice of bank and law enforcement and private security detail accompany every transaction for these expensive and PRICELESS stamps!!! As the buyer, you will only be given a couple of days' notice to come to the scheduled meeting for each transfer of my stamp to your courier. This ensures that security may pre-empt any attempts to steal my items! Also, all sales are pre-paid and transferred to a bank of my choosing before the stamp delivery meeting is scheduled.

FAKE STAMP BELOW:

    

Hey, Etsy (aka eBay), could you please clean your house of Chinese fake products? Seriously, this has gone way too far! First, they steal our product designs and flood our market with those, then they dare duplicate our national past time, stamp collecting!! I am disgusted with your apathy!

    

All loose stamps in piles, huh? They all look alike for some reason.

     

    

Stamps under $3.00? Really? A Babe Ruth, huh? No kidding! Wow! And how about those Astronauts in the lower right corner? I mean, double Wow! I wonder if they can show the backside of the stamps on any of these platforms and web-shots! The number of stamp websites is massive! I tell you, the stamp companies did not make that many to sell! Now what?

WORLD-WIDE FRAUD ALERT: PASS THE WORD!

6/30/2023 AM

I paid my yearly subscription to McAfee Cyber Security, but I recently began receiving emails saying that my subscription was about to expire. I went online to my McAfee Live Safe Account to make sure that my subscription is current. It is. My last email showing the McAfee (my name on the sending subject line so I thought it was from them) message that my subscription had indeed expired made me take the time to go to their website, look up their phone number, and call them to inform them that there may be spammers using their email system to target their customers with spam, malware, or ransomware.

I finally got through to India after a five-minute wait. I explained about the suspicious emails, and he told me to go to my account to see if I have an active subscription. I did. It is. Then, to my absolute horror, this supposed expert cyber professional told me to go to my Gmail inbox and open the bogus email...what? He isn't stupid. They know exactly what they are doing.

So, I explained right there on the spot in detail who I am, the investigator and cyber security from hell. I told him bluntly, you know, because it was being recorded, that back in the 90's Gmail and all other Internet mail systems took away the public's ability to HOVER over their email sender in the Inbox BEFORE they opened the email to read the address at the lower left corner of their desktop. This way, people could determine if the sender is like this: @support.gmail.com OR @.support.gmail.com. It is a very subtle difference (notice the period before the s in support?), but it makes all the difference in the world. You see, they may actually have that bogus email address hooked up to the real McAfee website and information page. They simply wanted you to open the email to get Intuit.

They rummage around on your computer to see what they might want to steal or use to contain you. They want to know absolutely everything about you and your family including your family photos so that they know who to target...out there. I went off on that Indio guy and told them right there to fix it or else the public would fix it for them! I know he understood the words coming out of my mouth because he quickly apologized in broken English and told me to have a good day! Hey! McAfee! I told you about this and you have yet to clean it up or to investigate your Indio affiliate "employees" for possible hacking fraud or blackmailing activity under your umbrella and policies! Shame on you!

Thank you for visiting! Come back soon for more updates and share us on social media to all your friends! See you on the flip side!