Ohio Tax Stamp Books W/Dispenser!

There is someone on ebay who has an interesting item up... it is a metal dispenser with 6 books of Ohio tax stamps! The seller has it listed under advertising signs, which as we all know is a mistake. Interesting to see!

Is this actually how these stamps were stored? Or was this an old "custom" job? And where would these stamps "live" until being affixed to something? A retail location, or an official office of some kind?

Here is the current auction link as of today:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/31064822585...ht_720wt_687

I don't know anything about the dispenser, but there's been several previous threads on Ohio Tax Stamps before. Some were issued in roll form; others in booklets. Here's a link to one of several previous threads:

https://goscf.com/t/6383

As I understand it, the tax stamps were for all retail purchases in the State of Ohio. Even if you went in for a major purchase and bought, for example, a new car, you would be given tax stamps of the appropriate amount. Sure, they're collectible, but the sheer volume of them that were produced means that they have very little, if any, value, except perhaps for the collector who is looking for certain varieties.

They are essentially grouped as a back-of-the-book item as State Revenue Stamps.

Edit: I maybe wrong, but I recall reading somewhere that these stamps were at checkouts in dispensing machines similar to trading stamps (S&H, TV, Plaid, etc.) that would enable the cashier to dial in a certain amount of stamps that would be dispensed to the customer. The look of the "dispenser" in the the initial ebay listing here, looks as if it were either an early version of a dispenser or a specialty item contrived for use by a merchant.

No matter, everyone seems to agree that it was a very cumbersome and tedious means of proving the collection of Ohio State Sales Tax.

Here are some examples of complete pairs to demonstrate what would be under the bar on the left side of the dispenser referred to in the original post.







And here is an image of the dispenser (so it remains available once the image is no longer stored on ebay).

As I remember from my days of working in the Red and White grocery store, the receipts came from the state in heavy paper bundles.
Many stores used these metal plates as a convenience for the register clerk to easily and quickly tear off the receipts after making a sale. One can quickly tear off the receipts necessary corresponding to the amount of sales tax imposed. As an example using the picture above, if the sales tax paid was 7 cents, the clerk could tear off two - 3's and a 1, or a 3, 2, and two 1's, or other combination.
When a stack of receipts was completely used, you simply loosened the wing nut, retrieved the stubs, pushed in a new bundle and tightened the wing nut. Then back to checking out the next buyer. These were mainly used in high volume stores such as a large grocery store (A & P for example) where you had lines of patrons waiting to check out. Speed was of high importance. In the store I was in, we could have up to 15 minutes between a check-out, so we just kept them in a drawer under the cash drawer.

for wt1 - I have never seen Ohio tax stamps in rolls. Can you supply an image? I have a big box of probably 20,000+, since I lived in Ohio until 1957, their final year of issue; not a single "roll" in the entire lot. There's acknowledged to be over 100,000 varieties, in theory, considering the number of printers, designs, perforations and roulettes, serial number types, paper colors, watermarks and watermark orientations, and denominations, etc.

What was these used for exactly and why could you just get them down at the A&P? This makes me curious as these were probably before my time.

My post may have been somewhat misleading. The 3% sales tax was required for all sales, with specific exceptions such as most food staples. I used the grocery store A&P as an example where a clerk would have a need to be able to quickly retrieve the prepaid tax receipts in the correct amount.

Here is an example (from ebay) where a receipt is attached to a bill of sales document. The picture shows a tax paid of 7 cents, but the ebay description states there are two bill of sales with a total of $4.93, hence the 15 cent tax paid.