A Scarce Revenue Multiple. Unbelievably Reunited With A Long Lost Sibling!

Scott #R12c, the orange 2-cent Playing Cards 1st issue revenue stamp is of moderate catalog value at $55.00. Multiples, on the other hand, are incredibly scarce, with the catalog value of a pair being $500.00 in italics. The Curtis Census listed a total of 8 multiples of any size: a reconstructed block of 4, an L-shaped block of 3, a strip of 3, 4 horizontal pairs and 1 vertical pair.

I stumbled across the following pair on eBay running as an auction last week. I set a snipe and was surprised to win it for a tiny fraction of my max, just barely over the minimum bid. I'm really surprised there wasn't more action on it. Yes, the stamps are off center, but with populations of multiples this tiny, you don't get much of a selection to choose from. You're not going to pop down to the corner stamp store and... oh wait, we don't have corner stamp stores anymore. Sigh.




As I was placing my snipe, I thought it looked eerily familiar... so I checked my collection and I had purchased an amazingly similar pair back in 2015, also from eBay:




Same centering, and amazingly similar handwriting in the cancel. It sure appears to be from the same sheet, canceled by the same hand!

What are the odds of two multiples this scarce being reunited?

Here is a composite with one of the pairs inverted so you can compare the cancels.

Good eye. If originally from the same block of four or sheet the group really shows how the affect of stamp storage conditions can effect orange pigment and stamps generally.

They are very likely from the same sheet, but not the same block.

To be fair, the scans were taken 6 years apart on likely different scanners with possibly different settings, so that could be a contributing factor to visual differences, although the orange is prone to sulfurization. To truly assess comparative differences, I would have to rescan both pairs of stamps together on the same pass.

The new pair does appear to be getting oxidized.

Similar tail. The top two have the same centering, the bottom one is slightly different but all three signed by the same person on the same date.

These were in two different glassines but I'm pretty sure came from the same estate sale. Upper left and bottom were together. Upper right was in a different glassine.