You never know what you might catch on a subsequent examination of an item that you might have missed the first time (or in this case, first several times). I first saw the multiple below in a dealer’s inventory at INDYPEX back in 2008, and have seen it every year since. it is a block of 3 of R15, and the dealer correctly noted that the top left stamp is a T15 major double transfer. When I saw it on…
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…
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…
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…
File this under “Yes, I know it’s pricey, but I just HAD to have it!” I already have several examples of R5b with major double transfer (T5), but this is the first one I have ever seen where the R5b is imperforate vertically rather than horizontally. As with all of the pert perforates that can be found imperforate in both directions, the examples that are imperforate vertically are far more scarce than the examples imperforate horizontally. Add to that the…
Too bad. It would have been a very interesting piece. Also, it looks as if there was another stamp to the immediate left.
This is the first use of this particular stamp that I have ever seen in person, and searches of SAN and other auction sites only turn up 3 or 4 examples on document. I spotted it on eBay with about 24 hours left to go and it only had 1 bid at $5.99. The seller was unaware of the significance of the stamps, so there were no indicators in either the auction title or the listing. I was hopeful I…
This one had me doing a facepalm… for myself, the seller, and everyone else on eBay at the time this auction was going on. I was going through all my unfiled revenue “stuff” tonight, looking for 1st issue silk papers to add to my site, and as what usually happens as I’m pawing through piles of stuff, I come across a few items that I don’t ever remember purchasing. The picture below is a small portion of a giant 2ft…
Sometimes when I find revenue-related ephemera, I just have to buy it for the “neato” factor. Item #1. I wish I had seen these when the seller first started listing them, as I might have gotten the complete box intact, but by the time I saw the listing, several pairs of the tins had already been sold. I did, however, did end up with the outer containing box, which no one else got. These are very fragile. At some point…
In the world of cancel collecting, frequently the stamp that the cancel is on doesn’t factor into the overall scarcity or value. Take the R22c below. On its face, nothing that exceptional about the stamp itself, other than being a nice green shade of the fugitive violet ink. In this case, the cancel makes ALL the difference in the world. The stamp itself catalogs for $7.50. When the stamp appeared on eBay earlier this week with a $90.00 Buy-It-Now, I…
Before I get into the topic at hand, first let me preface my comments with: I fully realize that professional grading really isn’t widely accepted in revenue collecting circles; this was more of an exercise in curiosity, and When discussing the stamps shown below, I am concentrating on the margins only and not on other potential aspects of grading such as soundness, color, paper, etc. There appears to me to be somewhat of an illogical disconnect in the manner that…