Is This IRS Stamp For Special Tax Really A Stamp?

I've had this lying around for a long time and never really looked at it until today. Is this considered a stamp or is it something else.

They are treated as a species of revenue stamp and handled by the leading revenue dealers. They are listed in one of the editions of the Springer catalog.

It is a revenue stamp, a Special Tax Stamp for Dealer in Manufactured Tobacco. Besides the listings in Springer, there is a catalog of special tax stamps that was created by Terry Hines back in the 70's. It's an excellent reference work but not common; a copy would probably run about $90-$100 these days.

Thank you both.

I always wanted one of these!

Punched remainders for almost all categories are really very common, $5 or $6 items. Actually used ones are worth more, depending on the category.

What do the punched holes mean? Are these defaced leftovers?

They are remainders. Back in the 1890's the private companies who printed stamps were condensing into ABNCO over time. ABNCO found itself with a large quantity of archives from all of these companies, and went to sell all the "scrap paper" they had accumulated. Along came Deats and Sterling, two of the giants of 19th century philately, especially revenues, who bought up a railroad car full of stamps, proofs, archival papers, covers, etc. Anyone who collects revenues, proofs, high value officials on cover, and some other philatelic items should bow at the very mention of their names; if not for them it probably would all have been destroyed. It took 6 people two years to sort and catalog it all. The Boston Book was one of the by-products.
When they bought them, the government insisted that all the taxpaids and special tax stamps had to be punched so as to not be available for possible fraudulent purposes. So they were.

Didn't something like this happen with Wine stamps a few years ago?

That was a sale by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing of a variety of revenue stamps from their vaults. They were not punched or marked when sold.

BEP? I thought it was the deaccessioned material from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, via auctions by Matthew Bennett.

You are right, the postal museum had them at that point. At some point they had to have come from the bureau though.

I love these stamps, though in truth they were effectively occupational licenses to tax the liquor and tobacco industry. But, yes, technically they are the largest U.S. revenue stamps ever issued. Only some of the cigar box taxpaid revenues measure out slightly longer at 17-18 inches.

You are absolutely right about Deats and Sterling -- without their efforts we probably would never know about these and many other obscure revenue stamps. I have to correct the story slightly, however. In the late 1880s the Treasury Department had filled its entire basement and an adjacent building with stacks of outdated tax stamps like this, unissued returns from hundreds of tax collectors over the years. They finally decided to sell them off to the highest bidder and Deats & Sterling ended up with seven boxcars worth of material. They did the punch cancelling on these remainders, I believe. The story goes that eventually the Treasury realized these might still be considered valid and demanded they be returned. D&S complied but held back a considerable amount, after cataloguing everything.

The engraving on these special tax stamps and taxpaids is stunning, on par with paper money and Treasury bonds of the era. Great stuff!

Wow that one is beautifully done as well!