The tobacco strips are listed in a catalog called Springer volume 10. It's long out of print and so is somewhat expensive.
This style of tobacco strips starts with series 102, which was issued in 1932. So 105 was 1935, 115 was 1945, and so on. Series 125 was used from 1955 to 1959, after which the stamps stopped being used and were replaced by blue paper labels. Every package of tobacco had to have a stamp. If you think for a moment about how many tobacco packages of these typical sizes were sold in any of these years, you will realize that they are quite common.
Thanks to
ebay they have become very popular over the last 20 years, but they are still usually $1 or $2 each EXCEPT for the one ounce stamp at the bottom. That stamp was printed "Series 120", but was later overprinted with a double surcharge "Series 122". That is known as a provisional usage, where they changed the series number because they changed the tax rate. Such provisionals are quite scarce and have real value, often as much as $100-$150. The double surcharge might add something as well, since they were normally only overprinted once.
Posted 11/11/2013 6:35 pm
