Modern Congo - LEGAL overprints

In many African countries, stamps after 2000 are hard to find, especially used stamps that have done actual postal duty.   Either very few legitimate stamps were issued by the actual postal authorities, or there is rampant theft, fraud and forgery, or customers just use barcodes and labels.

Theft and forgery are a difficult area.   When you see a post office issue stamps with overprints like "VALID" or "LEGAL", it's a good indication that whole shipments of stamps were either stolen or duplicated.  The idea would be that only stamps with this overprint would be accepted on the mail.  But couldn't the offenders just add their own overprint?  Sometimes, far from any industrial print shop, maybe that is too difficult and that little "LEGAL" print is enough of a deterrent.

Here is a selection of stamps from Congo with LEGAL and AUTORISE (authorized) overprints:

#1146,8,9 LEGAL overprints.  The catalog says that the underlying set of stamps "was never issued."

 

#1159 AUTORISE overprint: this word is in a repeating pattern across whole sheets of stamps

#1153 used 300fr LEGAL overprint

I just got these scanned and ready to list on my HipStamp shop.  They catalog for $8 to $10 each or are completely unpriced, just a blank where the price should go.  It is clearly difficult to come up with values for items that are so rarely seen.

Other countries in other decades have had to use similar marks or security overprints to help secure their stamps. I remember seeing security patterns overprinted on stamps of Nicaragua from the 1920s.  The problem has been going on for most of the history of the hobby.

As for how to define "fraud", keep in mind that these countries had some foreign agencies churning out beautiful big topical issues to sell to collectors for sometimes $10 to $20 per set, with tons of souvenir sheets to make even more money from us, while the people actually living in these countries use tiny regular issues most of us will never see.