A Revenue Collector's Blog

As much fun as it is to acquire a rare stamp as a single from a dealer at a stamp show, a brick & mortar stamp shop, or at auction, there’s something absolutely exhilarating about pulling a rare stamp from a collection or bulk lot… it’s a feeling of discovery, a triumph over the wilderness, beating the odds. 😉 I spotted the stamp in the following page (actual eBay image) from a 4-stockbook revenue lot on eBay. Of course the…

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I plucked this stamp from an eBay box lot of mostly reds and greens stuffed randomly in glassines, the majority perfin canceled as expected, but even some better ones amongst those. There was enough quantity and enough variety as far as denominations visible in the auction pictures that I figured there might be some sleepers. The stamp is not perfin or cut canceled, but it does have staple holes at center. Regardless, a nice find in any condition; a tough…

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I wish this were still on the original document, as I’d love to know the context… The origins of the expression “like Sam Hill” or “What the Sam Hill?” are unclear. The best explanation I’ve seen posited: http://www.word-detective.com/080401.html The explanation of “Sam Hill” is actually pretty simple — it’s an early 19th century American euphemism for “hell” used as an oath. Perhaps due to our Puritan ancestry, Americans have always been especially creative when it comes to inventing linguistic detours…

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Discovered in an eBay lot I purchased last month. 1st issue silk papers are one of the areas I focus on, as they (1) are a virtually impossible set to complete, (2) are frequently misdentified, both falsely positive and missed entirely, and (3) are very “cherrypickable”, even from established and knowledgeable dealers. I’ve put together a reference page for identifying 1st issue silks. One of the things that adds to the difficulty of collecting silk papers of the 1st issue,…

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Just received today courtesy of eBay. While technically the stamps in question are damaged, they were done so in a very interesting and aesthetically pleasing manner. This document was originally written up in the February 1979 issue of The American Revenuer: A $2.50 Conveyance—Entry of Goods Provisional Illustrated here must be what would be called the only known example of a First Issue $2.50 Conveyance stamp (or is it an Entry of Goods stamp?). The stamp is on a document…

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It’s been a while since I posted some of my revenue pick-ups. While COMPEX was, comparatively speaking, a failure for me, I have been picking up items online. Excluding the items I picked up for resale purposes, here are some of the keepers for my collection. First, a nice mining bond. Apparently there’s a hoard of these out there, so they are not commanding the cost that mining bonds and stock certificates normally get. A nice bottom margin example of…

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As with so many other things I come across, I really wish these were still on the original document, as context is everything. What makes this Scott #14 strip of 3 especially unusual is that they were used as revenues a full 6 years after being demonetized (no longer valid for postage). From Wikipedia: The second, more serious, demonetization was prompted by the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Southern post offices held substantial U.S. assets in the…

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It’s too bad that this is only a piece and not the complete document. Very attractive handstamp cancel with a French revenue also used on this piece of a sight draft. I haven’t seen many examples of U.S.-foreign revenue usages form the Civil War era.

Of little interest philatelically, but when I saw it couldn’t pass it up. The red and green printing make for wonderful contrast and the embossed cancel (seal) is just absolutely hammered. I’ve also included a copy of the text printed on the back of the document.

I previously posted about an R21c, 4-cent Playing Cards, that I picked up at Chicagopex because it was pristine as far as condition and centering. Well, for the last several weeks I’ve had an eye on a comparable R17c (3-cent playing cards). Nice centering on the R17c isn’t quite as scarce as on the R21c, but they are still not very common both sound and well centered. This one, however, was also a jumbo margin example (for the type), which…

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I finally finished imaging the goodies I picked up at or about the same time as CHICAGOPEX. The vast majority of my acquisitions came from Mike Morrissey’s exhibit and collection of 2nd issue (R103-R133) and 3rd issue (R134-R151) revenue stamps. Let’s start off with some documents, the majority chosen for their cancels, with the exception of the Aetna document, which was chosen for the aesthetics of the document itself. Now on to the stamps… First, a lovely R106 with great…

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The term “condition rarity” is a numismatic term that refers to a coin that, while is not in and of itself rare (which would be an “absolute rarity”), is in a grade or state of preservation that makes it rare. In other words, a condition rarity is an item that is rare in high grades, whereas an absolute rarity is rare in ANY grade. Philatelically speaking, a U.S. C3a, 1869 invert, or Pan Am invert would be an absolute rarity,…

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The vast majority of illegal usages I have encountered are either postage stamps used as revenues on a document, or revenue stamps used as postage on postcards or covers. Here’s one that’s a bit different, acquired laste weekend at CHICAGOPEX. Illegal use of a revenue, not as postage, but rather as a postage due stamp. The 1-cent Franklin was cancelled on September 8, 1927. You can see the penciled ‘Due’ notation peeking out from underneath the revenue stamp. Then the…

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Just imaged these tonight. The R45a has ginormous boardwalk margins, almost as if it was cut down from a multiple at the height of the grading craze (which never really took hold in the revenue-collecting community outside of Momen Stamps and Jay Parrino’s The Mint). The R112 is ohhhhhh so close to being a once-in-a-lifetime specimen… just 1 margin away.

Mixed U.S.-non-U.S. revenue documents from the Civil War era are exceedingly scarce. These six pieces came from the same collection. It’s too bad that they were clipped down.

I know that R30b does not exist, so this had to have been trimmed, but that had to have been the absolute tallest R30c ever made. I can only assume that it was a miseperfed bottom margin single (you can see part of the next stamp above) or the planets somehow aligned and it was misperfed away from this row in both directions. Regardless of being a fake, I still think it’s a neat-looking item.

It’s no secret that the production quality during the Civil War was virtually nonexistent. They were so rushed to produce revenue stamps that it didn’t matter how the sheets were perforated… if they were perforated at all. This block is a perfect example of typical shoddy workmanship from the period. Both the horizontal and vertical perfs are all over the map, creating the stamp in the 2nd column, 2nd row (the stamp immediately beneath it isn’t too bad either). First…

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Over the last 6 months I have purchased a very large amount of material from Bruce Baryla’s gold medal winning exhibit, The Civil War Sun Tax as he’s been breaking it down on eBay. I’m slowly but surely now making my way through processing and imaging the material. One of the lots I bought was a pair of Civil War CDVs containing two different stencil designs used by R.E. Merrifield of Shelby, Ohio. It goes perfectly along with a 3rd…

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Sometimes you see a messy mountain of material that you just HAVE to have. The mess shown below is on its way to me. 6 volumes of U.S. and worldwide revenues, locals, cinderellas, cut squares, and other miscellany. It just keeps going… My assumption is that virtually all of the U.S. locals, newspaper stamps, and Confederates are fakes/reprints/facsimiles (actually, most of the newspaper stamps are printed as such). It’s definitely a “quantity over quality” lot, as at least amongst the…

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I just got this one in the mail today, a very scarce R18c double transfer commonly referred to as ‘eggs north’, where the outlines of the numeral ovals are transposed to the north. There is also an ‘eggs west’ (which I am still looking for) although that DT is not as bold as this one. The second image is much higher resolution with the DT elements highlighted. It looks like there might also be something going on through the tops…

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Pacific Mail steamship cancels are very sought after. You normally encounter them with 1-3 strikes of the cancel on a stamp. As a general rule, the more identifiable strikes on a stamp, the higher the market value. Also, the greater the visual contrast between cancel and stamp, the better. For example, since virtually all Pacfic Mail cancels are in blue ink, the examples on 2nd issue revenues and the $3 denominations of the 1st issue do not make as aesthetically…

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I wanted to hold off posting about this one until it came back from the Philatelic Foundation. The vast majority of claimed R53a on the market are fakes, and there are even arguments that they all are, since there are no horizontal pairs known to exist. I’ve handled any number, both with and without certs, and very rarely do I encounter one that seems plausible. Well, at COMPEX I happened to be going through Gary Posner’s inventory and stumbled across…

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I’ve finished imaging the revenues I picked up this past weekend at COMPEX. No major finds but a few nice pieces. I did send 2 stamps that I bought on extension to the PF on Monday, and if they end up being good I’ll post them. The one item in particular is about the most aesthetically pleasing example of its type that a cancel collector will find, as the vast majority are found with manuscript cancels. So… on to the…

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20th-century revenues used illegally as postage on covers are neat items, but as a general rule are not extremely scarce or valuable unless there is something extremely unusual about the cover or usage. Simple examples are usually $15-30 items. Well, last week on eBay I stumbled across a usage I’d never seen before: revenues used as postage dues. As Bart pointed out to me, it would not have been unusual for a post office to have revenue stamps on hand…

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Just got these two in today. Both are exceptional pieces, in my opinion. The first is a very nice example of R17c (3-cent Playing Cards), which is fairly uncommon on a CDV. More importantly though, it is sound (most are not) and has wonderful deep color. The subject matter is military, which is always in demand. Second is a piece that I hemmed and hawed over buying, but ultimately decided I had to own. It is currently the only reported…

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Tell me what you can about the item below. This image is the only piece of information you have, and it is at full size. If you saw this on eBay, how would you proceed? Giving you some spoiler space so as not to give it away… There was enough fuzziness around the edges of the stamp that it bothered me. Although the odds were very much against it, I thought it was worth checking out. I asked the seller…

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I hope you’re insured… This is an insurance policy, along with the original advertising envelope it came in, from the Pennsylvania Mutual Horse Thief Detecting and Insurance Company, in York, Pennsylvania. (I love the thematically appropriate embossed seal!)

In December 2012, Robert Siegel held a multi-day auction containing, among other things, the collection and exhibit material of the late Steven Belasco. Hidden within that material was a lot containing 10 examples of one of the coolest philatelic items I’ve ever seen: presumably the first stock certificates ever issued for a U.S. stamp company, issued in 1866. I bid aggressively on the lot, but ultimately came up the underbidder. I was able to find out who outbid me and…

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This past weekend was the first weekend of my Christmas vacation (I hadn’t had a chance to use more than 2-3 vacation days all year long, so I have a bunch to burn up). With nothing on the docket, and really feeling in a “philatelic mood” on the spur of the moment I decided to drive up to the ASDA show in Lombard, IL. I had not been to this venue before (Lindner Conference Center). The drive up was VERY…

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I received these three stamps in the mail this week, one from eBay and the other two from an auction house. Each is unique in its own way. Two of the three are fairly common, at least according to the Scott catalog, but as is all too frequently the case, either the catalog is wrong (in my opinion) or there’s more to the story than just the catalog value. First is a lovely unused example of RB1c, the imperforate version…

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Browsing through a junk box at CHICAGOPEX, I did a spit-take when I saw this stamp… absolutely HORRIFIC. But it was less than $10, so I bought it as a joke and showed it around, producing winces and cringing throughout the bourse. When I got it home, I put it up on eBay purely as a joke, but believe it or not it actually sold at a reasonable profit. The person who purchased it bought it as an experimentation project…

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A new acquisition for my collection of U.S. revenues used as postage stamps; the first example I’ve seen on a leather postcard.

Looking through the PFSearch, one does occasionally encounter declined opinions rather than positive or negative opinions. They are comparatively few and far between, but they are out there. It got me thinking about the piece below. I purchased this as a fake and as a discussion piece a few months back, but the more I think about it, the more I think one could debate its merits… but ultimately, in my opinion we can never know what it actually is….

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I had high hopes for this stamp being a major upgrade for my existing copy, but as happens all too frequently on eBay, it was not all that it was claimed to be. No faults were disclosed in the listing, and the listing photo was small enough that you really couldn’t tell for certain. When I made my offer, I included wording to the effect that the offer was contingent upon the stamp being completely sound. When I opened the…

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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…

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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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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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