Two Gorgeous (Imo) US Revenue Documents From Chicagopex

Well... sort of. One is from the proprietary collection I purchased at the show, that had I left the show 30 minutes sooner on Sunday, I never would have even seen, and the second is actually from Eric Jackson's 3-week auction that had ended the Tuesday before the show and I asked him to bring it rather than mailing it.

The first document is an unsevered 1872 Second and Third of Exchange from the "Triple-Currency Exchange", Bowles Brothers & Co., not one of the more-frequently seen entities on foreign exhange documents. Unusual not only in that it is printed in multiple inks, but for my purposes in that it features two RB1a used improperly as documentaries on the reverse, both tied by herringbone cancels.




The second is just purely an aesthetic piece, an 1866 bill of lading from the San Francisco firm "Glidden & Williams." I know I overpaid for it due to a bidding war breaking out in the last few hours of the auction (dadgum it!), but it's IMO a stunning piece, so I pressed higher than I originally intended. I found one comp online being offered for $250, but it's not stamped, so I like this example better anyway.

Bills of lading typically weren't printed in multiple inks, let alone metallic ink. The gold is bright and reflective; more beautiful in hand than the image implies.

Thank you for those very interesting examples. The OCD in me goes off when stamps are applied in different orientations on the same page---are people that lazy and have no concept of beauty in their mundane tasks---shame, shame.

Not only the RB, but the second and third issues used together. A three issue franking? Don't see many of those, even with first, second, and third issues. But 16 cents seems an odd rate.

As a foreign bill of exchange set of three, the original tax was 2 cents per $100 or fraction. So the exchange rate at the time would have to be determined.

Yeah, I did some looking yesterday but couldn't find an exact exchange rate from that month/year. Based upon the tax, presumably 149UKP amounted to 700-800 USD, hence the tax amount. I found an exchange rate about a year or two off which used a converstion of approximately 4.8 dollars to the pound, which calculates correctly.




Heh. I was so enamored with it being an improper use and an unsevered pair of exchange that I didin't even notice that it was 3 different issues.

The closest other document I have is 1st, 3rd, and RB shown below, but nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing.

The US and UK were both on the gold standard back then, so the exchange rate did not change and was just the ratio of gold in a dollar coin to the gold in a pound coin. That worked out to $4.80 from around the US civil war to the great depression. The complication is the depreciated currency around the time of the civil war, where amounts that were required to be settled in gold (for example some postage rates involving the UK) that required payment of a larger amount of currency - for example 45 cents due in specie, 61 cents currency. I would assume revenue stamps could be purchased with currency, but that is just a guess. I know postage stamps could be purchased with currency.

I assume they could be, but I have never seen anything stating either way.

The document was originally folded; they probably were applied in the same direction before it was opened up.