Tobacco Revenues - Need Some Help Please?

Early large strip tobacco stamps almost always come damaged and repaired. However these examples are missing large portions of the design, and are worth very little by themselves. Collectors of these stamps usually save all pieces, since they may find other pieces later and put a complete stamp together, or use them to repair faults in almost complete examples.
Tobacco strips are listed in a catalog called Springer, volume 10. It was issued in 1985 and is out of print but can sometimes be found on ebay or from Richard Friedberg or Eric Jackson. Most volumes run $35-$40 (volume 9 is usually a lot higher). Current retail prices are usually between 6-10 times the Springer prices. Although there are 10 volumes, if one has volumes 6-10 than you will have everything Springer covered.

Whether worthless or valuable, those stamps show beautiful intricate engravings that reflect the workmanship of those by-gone days. Today, stamps lack such character, as most are merely computer generated designs.

These stamps, which are actually cigar stamps were engraved and printed by various bank note companies; they all specialized in this type of engraving (these were by Continental in 1869 and 1872). The 100 cigars Grant stamp was issued for the series of 1869. The right hand piece is the center portion from a 100 cigars stamp which had Hancock pictured on it from the series of 1872.

wt1 I couldn't agree anymore with any body on anything. They are indeed beautiful! revcollector thank you for the insight on these. I'll let Mitch know what I've learned about them. Many thanks!