posted 05-18-2019 10:47 AM               

Space Cover #515: Another Riser Cover

I can't add much to Steve Durst's excellent and informative SCOTW posting (#269) back in June 2014 about the Charles Riser fake cover saga. Steve gave a great account of the sordid story and it might be beneficial and educational to revisit the story, as these Riser fakes still surface at times and have the potential to sell for big bucks to the unwary and uninformed.

A classic Riser fake example is shown here. The scan of it was sent to me by another collector and hopefully he wasn't fooled by the cover.

This cover is a good example of the skilled and devious handiwork of Riser and this particular cover shows his ambitious attempt at adding forgeries to his fake covers, as this example shows four forgeries, including the USS Lake Champlain's CO, George Cox.

Riser become over confident and overly ambitious by adding fake autographs to his like-wise fake covers, as his creations display various astronaut forgeries and even others (one such cover is a fake USS Randolph/MR-4 PRS cover "signed" by Grissom, Shepard and Wernher von Braun, with "von Braun" even adding "Best wishes."

So buyer beware, as fakes of all sorts are widely distributed in our hobby, with other dishonest sellers and forgers following in Riser's dirty footsteps.

posted 05-23-2019 08:10 AM               

At first glance, perhaps the only genuine-looking signature would be Scott Carpenter from the above Riser cover depiction. And on this particular cover, in my opinion, the Shepard is way-off (original secretarial style) and the Schirra has many issues, especially in the last name and Jr. endings.

Or just maybe "master forger" could refer to Riser's mass-productions of autograph forgeries throughout the 1960/70's.

posted 05-25-2019 07:02 AM               

Ken's correct about the Shepard forgery. These "spiked p" Shepard secretarials were seen often back at the time that Riser was turning out fakes and evidently he used one as a "model". They have been seen on a number of his covers.

In the early days of space cover and astronaut autograph collecting, collectors weren't as informed and experienced as collectors were later, and sadly were duped and fell for Riser's deceptions and were easy prey - for a while - but for too long.

But he became over confident and his productions became more and more suspect. He seemed to have an endless supply of rare covers and autographs. It's been said that often a collector would ask if he had a certain rare item, and he'd ask him to wait and he'd look and, voila, he'd always produce!

posted 05-25-2019 10:43 PM               

In my collecting I have been overly conservative and hesitant to purchase certain covers because of the presence of Riser. From other posts on the topic, I see that he liked to use the pre-stamped embossed airmail envelopes, used hand cancels, and often added signatures.