A Revenue Collector's Blog

As part of my revenue collecting, I have been recently enjoying illegal usages of postage stamps as revenues on documents during the Civil War and Spanish American War periods. I’m up to about 25 documents now, including a few multiples, some combinations of different postage denominations, some with a postage stamp and a revenue, and even one with a demonetized 1851 postage stamp. They are more common than the reverse (revenues illegally used for postage on cover), but that actually…

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1st issue plate number singles are fairly scarce and usually command large premiums. High-denomination plate number singles are even more scarce and rarely seen. A high-denomination plate number single still on document?… about as rare as rocking horse manure. Luckily for me, the seller of the document below didn’t use the terms “plate number”, “plate single”, “margin”, or “imprint” anywhere in the title or listing. In fact, they just listed it as a regular R97c. I guess this technically is…

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I don’t know the behind-the-scenes goings on or what transpired with whom, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll admit that I’m somewhat puzzled by the numbers. One of the holes I still needed to fill in my1st-3rd series revenue collection is R150a, the high denomination ($20) of the third issue, vermillion error of color. I’ve seen quite a few here and there but none that struck my fancy until this one appeared on…

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