Turner Essays?

I have found a few essays online that I find strikingly beautiful and was kind of hoping one of you Revenue specialists could help me out here. This particular one is listed as a "turner essay" 78A



The other is presumably a confederate states of America essay without a number (that I could find)



I guess my question is are these highly sought after or more run-of-the-mill specialist material?

The turner essays are vast and, correct me if I'm mistaken here, have their own catalog and specialists following. I guess I just need a "quick & dirty" education on the turner essays I guess? The confederate one is a beauty too isn't it?

George Turner was the man who compiled the catalog, and so his is the numbering system used for revenue essays. It's an excellent reference except for the pricing, which was very obsolete even when the book was published.
He was also the agent for Morton Dean Joyce, who owned the greatest revenue collection ever compiled. Anyone with any interest at all in revenues who has not seen the two auction catalogs of the Joyce sales is missing the most amazing sight. I've owned them for 20 years and am still amazed every time I look at one.

Essays are both highly sought after by a few serious collectors and are certainly specialist material. Since there were very few examples of most essays produced, they are almost never "run of the mill" items. At one time there was a group called the Essay-Proof Society which published a magazine for many years, but as they passed on they were not replaced with new collectors and the society ended. There are a few essay collectors who are members here. I like them a lot but do not have the resources to collect them, alas.

I'm toying with starting a very serious essay collection and devoting some serious attention and possible funding but I I have since learned from the wonderful folks on here not to leap before I look...so research material will be my first purchases. I will be in no hurry to purchase any item as I've learned my lesson. Now on my stamp collection I'm obviously more picky now about the material I buy than I was a few years ago, but over all I'm not fanatical about it and I'm usually just happy to have a representation of an item to pour over and not too awfully overly concerned with (to me) the occasional pulled perf or centering but now, like I previously stated, I'm a lot more choosey on the material I buy. I believe the key is in the reference material so I fully understand what your saying about those auction catalogs even though I never knew of that fellow (Morton Dean Joyce) but I will make a point of learning about his collection. I guess what I'm saying is thank you for the time to pass along your knowledge revcollector, Revenuecollector, Revstampman, wt1, smauggie, stallzer, Sir Winston, Sir Rodney. etc.. the list goes on and on..

The confederate essay is a fake. It is a copy of the unique liberty head essay attriuted to manouvier of New Orleans. There are several different fakes of this essay.



Produceed by August A. Deitz in 1919 as part of 20 cards set showing confederate stamps.





Examples of other fakes




Geunine essay (form www.siegelauctions.com)