The Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau and the Government of Tuvalu wishes to advise all collectors that the following stamps or overprints on genuine stamps were produced without the authorization of the government of Tuvalu. Most of these have been seen on internet auction venues, such as eBay and Yahoo. Some of the illustrations are not clear, and hopefully better ones will be found.

1. CAPEX 78 and various other overprints on the 1986 Thematic Events (Chess and Rotary) souvenir sheets. No overprints were authorized for this issue. All in existence are fakes, some are shown below. Others do exist.
   
   Fakes
   Fakes
    
2. 1999 Moon Landing issue, overprinted in red "Columbia Memorial" is fake. No overprints were produced for this issue. Imperforate forgeries, with and without the overprint are purported to exist.
   
   Fake overprint
    
3. 2002(?) Columbia Memorial: This stamp was not authorized by Tuvalu. More values may exist in the "set". The reported example is imperforate. More information is requested.
   
   Fake
    
4. 2002 Elvis Presley: Only one Elvis stamp issue was authorized by the government of Tuvalu, issued December 27, 2002. Click here to view the sheet. The issue below was not produced by Tuvalu, and is illegal.
   
   Fake
    
5. 1992 "Philatelic Bureau" postmark, seen cancelling demonetized "Leaders of the World" stamps, in an attempt to produce genuine-looking kiloware. The group of LOW "cancelled" stamps shown here was seen on eBay in late 2002. The vendor was asked to provide a close-up of the postmark but did not comply. Careful examination seems to indicates that the postmark is similar to the rendition below. A similar but quite different cancel that was used by the Philatelic Bureau in 1980 for a short period of time is shown for comparison.
   
   This kiloware is not genuine and is believed to have been artificially created in England. In addition to the postmark being fake, the dates of the cancels are all various months of 1990. However, all LOW stamps were demonetized in 1989, after millions of remainders were dumped onto the market when the Consultants went into receivership.
   
   Genuine (left)
   
   
   Fake cancels inscribed Nukufetau and Niutao
    
6. 1986 (or later) Statue of Liberty 18 different stamps. Ten are horizontal in format, eight are vertical. Some are illustrated below, thanks to Herbert Chamberlain. They are quite different than the genuine Thematic Issue souvenir sheets of 1986. They have been reported for sale on eBay.
   
   
   
   
    
7. 1996 10th Asian International Philatelic Exhibition
   A gold overprint has been seen applied in the margin of the genuine 1996 Year of the Rat souvenir sheet, as seen below. This overprint was not authorized by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau.
   
   
   
   
8. 1996 10th Asian International Philatelic Exhibition (different, below))
9. 1996 Phila Seoul
   
   
   
10. 1988 Olympics inscribed Vaitupu. 70c value seen so far.
    

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has information on any of the above items,  or other items of question being offered as genuine philatelic products of Tuvalu. Any additional images would be appreciated.

Brian Cannon
TuvaluIslands.com

brian@tuvaluislands.com