2014 Chicagopex - The "Baby" Revenue Hoard

This is the smaller of the two revenue collections I purchased at Chicagopex. Unlike the larger collection, this one is a a completely disorganized mess, with almost exclusively low-cat items, just gobs of them ripe for flyspecking and hunting for cancels and silk papers.

In addition to what is shown, there were also several packets of R135 and R151, as well as a couple of small revenue collections on album pages, nothing of major import (at first glance).

This one has a bit more variety, in that there are pages of battleships (both documentary and proprietary), cheap telegraphs, playing card stamps, and a few other types.

Once I go through it, I'll probably make up a new variety of donation packets. The quantity of different playing card precancels should hold some interest for folks.

Be forewarned, the page below contains 110 high-resolution images, so if you're on dial-up or mobile, you might not want to click it, as it will suck bandwidth...

http://www.revenue-collector.com/chicagopexsmall/

I envy you flyspecking the one cent and two cent express stamps; love to be abler to do that. :-)

I don't have it, but I know that there is a catalog of those playing cards cancels, it might pay you to try to borrow one and check them out.

WOW!! I noticed several issues with different colors or shades (same denomination). Looks like you have a 'snow storm' of activity for the winter months ahead. (if not cold climate resident-a monsoon day)

Yeah, both in this accumulation and the big one, you can get a very good visual representation of the different shades that stamps come in, especially the unstable violet inks (R20, R22, R51, R52, R80, and R84).

Even on the others, as a general rule the brighter or more vibrant hues are later printings.

Generally as time passed they darkened the lighter shades and lightened the darker shades in an attempt to make cleaning and reusing the stamps more difficult.

That was the samller lot? Looks like you'll be busy for a while. Nice lot!

Yeah, this is the "small" one. The big one is 20,000-25,000 stamps:

http://www.revenue-collector.com/chicagopex

Busy for a LONG time...

you have some real nice SONs. I really like the script cancels though. The calligraphy is something else.

A few questions regarding script cancels, and I apologize if this isn't the right place for it. How do you determine if the cancel is appropriate on the stamp? I guess what would prevent someone from just adding a pen/pencil cancel now?

Nice haul though Rev. You definitely have some desk work ahead of you.

Someone certainly could add a cancel now, although uncancelled 1st-3rd revenues, especially the larger stamps (larger denominations) are pretty uncommon.

Also, there's not much to be gained financially from adding a manuscript cancel to a stamp.

As far as determining whether a cancel is contemporary or not, I assume something could be done via UV analysis or something similar.

Thanks for the responses and as I said, nice haul!

I don't collect revenue stamps, though I have had some in my collection from time to time. But let me say, given the opportunity to purchase a group like this, I would become a revenue collector. You are living the dream of all stamp collectors. Enjoy it to it's fullest. Congratulations !