N. Imperato

Nino Imperato (born c. 1890s),^[1] normally known just as N. Imperato, was a stamp forger based in Genoa, Italy in the early 1920s.

Like Francois Fournier, Imperato promoted his forgeries as facsimiles available to the collector at a fraction of the cost of the real thing. His house journal, Il-Fac-simile, went through at least nineteen editions between 1920 and 1922.^[2] Amongst other content the journal included two short articles by fellow forger (or distributor of forgeries) Angelo Panelli.

Work

Forgeries were produced of a wide range of stamps, including:^[2]

• Italian occupation of Austria - 1918 issue overprinted Venezia Giulia and Venezia Tridentina.
• Brazil issues of 1850.
• Eritrea stamps of 1892.
• Honduras issue of 1898.
• Italian offices in the Turkish Empire, stamps of 1908.
• Spain Don Quixote commemoratives of 1905.
• Sicily Neapolitan Provinces stamps of 1861.
• British occupation of Batum 1919.

Many other were offered too but it is thought that they had actually been produced years earlier by Erasmo Oneglia of Turin.^[2] Robson Lowe and Carl Walske speculate in their book on Ongelia that he retired around 1920^[3] and it may be around then that Imperato acquired his stock of Oneglia forgeries.^[4]