My Introduction To Revenue Stamps

While I haven't had much interest in stamp collecting in about 25 years, I recently pulled out my childhood stamp collection. A rekindled interest of sorts. Stuffed away in the box was my great uncle's first childhood stamp album. It's been boxed away for 20 years -- he left it to me when he passed away at a time in my life when I had no interest in stamps. Anyway, going through it has been quite a trip! He put this collection together in the 30s. It's literally a college ruled Collegiate notebook that he mounted his stamp in and they have been sitting there for some 70+ years now.

Anyway, I came across this one page with revenue stamps. I've never heard of them and find them simply amazing! I've read a bit about them online and hope to identify them in the coming days. I see this forum has quite a bit of information about them and find them very interesting! There are a few others, but the attached image shows most of them.

xquercus, Welcome to the forum. I am not a revenue expert but there are some here who will most likely reply sooner or later. But, I can tell you that you have at least 3 different types of cancels common on revenues: hand written cancel across the face of the stamp; cut cancel which is on the top right and one with a date stamped on the upper left.

You may want to think about moving the stamps to a more appropriate album or stockbook. An old collegiate notebook that has been sitting around for decades is no longer considered an acceptable means of storage for stamps, as the paper is not archival safe and may eventually damage the stamps.

Oh, definitely. My own album from when I was a child is in quite good shape and I've been moving these stamps over or transferring them into glassine envelopes. I started with the early 1900s commeratives as I'm familiar with them and will move on to the other series. It's very slow going though. The canceled stamps are easy. I've just been soaking off the hinges. The mint stamps are a challenge as many have partially stuck to the paper. It's tough deciding whether to attempt removal in mint condition -- damaging the gum and potentially the stamp in the process -- or soaking and being left with a mint no gum stamp.

Welcome Xquercus

I got my first U.S. revenues when I bought an old Scott National album and there were some revenues in the back section of the album. I still add a few here and there whenever I get a chance but my largest collection of revenues are Canadian, which I made my own album for.

Chimo

Bujutsu

xquercus - welcome to the forum and to this hobby. Nice stuff and looking forward to seeing some more. I'm a recent returnee to the hobby as well.

X- Welcome--
If you continue on your US Revenue journey, here are two references you might want to look at:

"Introduction to United States Revenue Stamps" Written by one of best known dealers, and industry experts, Richard Friedberg. It is one of the Linn's Handbook Series books, and basically tells the revenue story, and is a really great, and easy to read/understand, reference for beginners.

The other, you can find online on Google Books: "Revenue Stamps of The United States 1862-1899", otherwise known as "The Boston Revenue Book". It was posted here on SCF awhile back, but you go to Google, and under "More" go to books, and in the search field put in "Stamps", and when I just checked, it is the first title that appears.

Both of these tell the story, of not only about the stamps, but why, how and when. Can't go wrong with the freebie.

Hope this is helpful-- good luck-- Ray

Welcome to the forum,

Revenues are an interesting group for sure.
I'll second ray.mac's suggestion on Richard Friedberg's book, it's filled with a lot of info that'll get ya going.