Ala the Penthouse Forum of days of yore: “I never thought anything like this would happen to me…” 😉

Some of you may recall my finding an R15e (2-cent USIR on green paper) in an eBay lot back in 2014 that turned out to be genuine. I submitted it to the Philatelic Foundation and it got a clear cert. I chronicled the events and did some rudimentary research compiling an R15e census in an earlier blog post.

First, let me draw your attention to the following entries of the above census:

Siegel Auctions Sale 642, lot 82. October 12, 1983.

Siegel Auctions. The Philip Little Collection of U.S. Revenue Stamps, lots 586 and 587. February 13, 1962.

Note the cancels. All are from the same company: Coffin & Altemus, Philadelphia.

Fast forward to today. Over the past several years I’ve tossed common and/or damaged 1st-3rd issue revenues into a bin to eventually use as mixture fodder. I’m going through it now as I have someone who wants a large quantity of common revenues.

As I’m pawing through it, the stamp below catches my eye. The paper is not as vibrant a shade of green as the one I found in 2014, but the cancel is a dead ringer for the above, the cancel date is correct (1866), and the paper texture and thickness are correct.

What do you think… worth sending for a cert?

UPDATE: I sent it to the Philatelic Foundation and it came back with a clean cert as R15e, so I’ve now found two examples of this very rare stamp in the wild. Since traded away.