Revenue Stamps On Civil War Era Photographs

Great Collection Tom

We learn something new all the time here.

Dianne

Tom

To answer your question some of the rail road stock certificates did have nice engravings on them

yes, I am interested in them!

Great collection Tom...... thanks for showing them.

I thought I read years ago that a photo with the "wrong" revenue carried a premium. Who actually affixed the stamps, the photographer? Where did he get them, from a post office? Why would he have playing card revenues instead of the propriety ones?

For those following this thread, I just posted one here ... https://goscf.com/t/20563

WOW! Those are really interesting! My grandmother collects antiques and I remember a big box of old "tin-types" and daguerreotypes <-sp? I'll have to check them out! She said I could have them one time. Wouldn't that be neat! Great pics Tom! Thank you!


edited spelling error.

First learned of these here on SCF. So when I saw this one today at the Old book and paper show in Toronto, I just had to have it!





Civil War era (?) photo of George Whitney, Brother-in-law of John Ainslie.
Photo by K. S. Porter Photographic Artist Winchendon, Mass.
Appears to be a US R18 on the back, canceled RSP Sept 16. Unfortunately no year.
Pretty cool, huh?

yes very cool!

Great items. As an artist / photographer I found these photographs fascinating. I believe there was also a stamp revenue applied to packs of playing cards.

Terry

If you are interested in this topic, you should check out the online exhibit put together by Bruce Baryla on the "Sun Tax."

http://www.pipeline.com/~ciociola/b...civilwar.htm

C.

"I thought I read years ago that a photo with the "wrong" revenue carried a premium. Who actually affixed the stamps, the photographer? Where did he get them, from a post office? Why would he have playing card revenues instead of the propriety ones?"

To answer this (somewhat old) question:
The stamps would be affixed by the photographer, but paid for by the person who ordered the photograph. Stamps were purchased at the local IRS office or representative, which probably would have been a local merchant in smaller locations.
Although the stamps originally were created to be used exclusively for whatever their designation was, this was clearly impractical and was changed very quickly (there was a memo out by Dec of 1862). It was decided that Proprietary and Playing Cards stamps could be used interchangeably on all proprietary items, and that all other designations could be used interchangeably for all other taxes except proprietary ones. This is a large part of why most of the Playing Cards stamps are relatively scarce; Butler & Carpenter stopped printing them and simply printed Proprietary stamps instead.