Burrows Island #4455/5500???

Anyone seen the Burrows Island currently on Ebay with a flag # of 4455???

That's interesting since they only made 2563 of them.

Looks like a good forgery except for the smudged ink.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11132&item=6137704105&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

I wrote and asked the seller about the Flag Number. No response thus far.

bobo

Wonder what kind of idiot would change it to a higher number?

Jim,

Only some ignoramus who thought the max was set to 5500.

Bob

Maybe we should be a little more careful of name calling here in the forums... this may have been done before the person selling bought it... They may have had nothing to do with the number change..

You are innocent until proven guilty even in the Forums or on Ebay!!

I wasn't referring to the person selling the piece -- only to the person who attempted to change it.

bobo

Just received the following response from the seller:

bobo

Your right Paul, another thing to consider is that it may just as well be an error made by Harbour Lights. Over the years we have seen unusual numbers pop up that weren't expected on other pieces. Assateague was one I seem to remember.

Sean

I personally don’t believe the seller had anything to do with the number change.
The ebay atmosphere has change over the years. There are many professional ebayers. All they do is buy and sell. They may know nothing about what they are buying or how much it is worth. The obvious proof of this is that the seller starts out with $9. The fact that the seller is called e-auctionseller tells me he just buys up bargains and try’s to resell at a profit.

I personally feel that it looks like the number was forge. Numbers are painted on by an artist.
The 44 does not look like something I expect an artist to do. A artist would not do such a sloppy numbering job as the one shown. When I returned my golden gate bridge because of damage I requested the same number. Harbour lights could not send me the bridge until they found an artist to paint on the number. The artist was Harry Hines. I could not imagine Harry or any other Artist making a sloppy number as shown on this Burrows Island.

The following are the reasons it looks like the number was tampered with:
1. This number has ink smear behind the first two numbers.
2.The two fours are not consistent in size, location and style.
3.The two 5’s look original and consistent but the fours are not.

The number I see is 1155 that was tampered into looking like a 4455

Next why would someone do this?

1.A practical joke. Or a conversation piece.
2.To try and pass it off as a rare high-numbered Burrows island and sell it for a lot of money.

Last
Sean makes a good point that with harbour Lights many times unusual things pop-up and just because something isn’t consistent doesn’t make it a fake.
I learned this with my 0012 Ponce. I thought the numbers were tampered with to make it a low number since it had the zeros in front of it. I checked with Kim and she said that the zeros did happen with some of the Harbour Lights. They would try and caught it and have the Artist stop
doing it but sometimes they slipped out.

My conclusion is:

80% chance that the number was tampered with.
20% chance that it is a Harbour Lights mistake and the number was not tampered with.
100% chance the seller on ebay knows nothing about the number.

It went for $73.72 with 12 bids

Flag# or no suspicious flag#, that was a steal for that piece if it was in good shape.

Bob