Nevada State Revenue Stamps

In an earlier thread, Southpaw posted some State Revenue stamps, including these from the State of Nevada:



Some might be interested to know that I just came across this Meekel's Stamp News article from 1915 that helps to explain their usage:

Awesome stamps and great info! Thanks for all your hard work!

Great job - interesting write-up. An exhaustive listing of these issues was done by Michael Mahler. It is available as a pdf on revenuer.org. Click on Articles and Research and you'll be able to find it. I used this as a basis of working up my Nevada Revenues album pages. Information can also be found in the 1910 United States State Revenue Stamps handbook on archive.org. just google handbookchecklis00bart.pdf and you will find it!

I saw that "exhaustive listing" on revenuer.org but it was something like 35MB of data to download, so it's more for the advanced collector rather than the novice.

Everything that Michael Mahler writes is geared to the advanced collector, but if one has the time then there is a lot to be learned, he is an excellent student of philately.

I've always been drawn to the CA and NV revenues - and they aren't all that expensive. Some maybe elusive, but you can certainly find them from time to time. I paid $4 each for the 3 NV values, and I really like the the 5c with it's stamped blue cancel. The vast majority of these revenues have pen cancels. Michael Mahler pegs the roulette 10 5c green at $2.50, the roulette 18 2c orange at ??, and the roulette 10 50c at $2.50. The CA revenues seem to be a bit more difficult to find, especially the circular die cuts.

I guess some of my interest stems from the 10 years we lived in northern CA. I would visit as many ghost towns as I could to photograph. Below are a few of my photos of Rhyolite, NV which was active from 1904 to about 1910. It was located just east of Death Valley CA. Rhyolite was a little too late for these revenues, but there were many gold country camping/explorations we did in places that were steeped in Deadwood-like history.

I recently acquired this Nevada revenue. According to the 1915 Stamp News article all of the first issue were unrouletted. I would assume then that some, or all, have what appear to be "sewing machine" perforations. Would this be a reasonable assumption? Are there catalog numbers for these Nevada revenues and/or values for them?

The most recent and best catalog source for all state revenues, including California and Nevada is the State Revenue Society's State Revenue Catalog, which was edited by the late Dave Wrisley. Several checks were also imprinted with both Nevada and federal stamps (also listed in the Scott U.S. Specialized). In addition to Nevada and California you might also find that your own state has issued and used some very interesting revenue stamps.

Hi

I live in a very small town (3 traffic lights) in Nye Nevada. I find this stamp scan posted by quigngt (hope I got the spelling correct?) very interesting and very attractive.

I find the early Nevada Revenue Stamps very interesting, I have a few of them, there is also a book "Nevada Checks 1860-1933", just in case you have any interest in these. Part 3 of the book is "Nevada Territorial and State Warrants", these instruments sometimes can be obtained for very cheap costs. Just in case you might be interested.

You might if interested visit your library, some have a program called in Inter Library System, you can ask for either book and if some library has either one or both, your library can loan it, and then that way you do not have to pay for them. There is a cost to you, waiting time.

Thanks revenuermd and stampmaster. I checked the Mahler catalog. What I have is definitely not perf 10. Here are a couple of perf details using guage 15 and 16. Neither appear to be correct. I do not have a guage 18 handy at this time. In Mahler's catalog concerning perf 18 he says on p34:


Mine is dated Oct 1870. If it is a compound roulette or roulette 18, he might be interested in seeing it. How can he be contacted in order to send him a scan?

Hi quigngt, are you are using a perf to measure roulette? This is the incorrect way to measure a roulette, instead just count the number of roulette indications in 20 MM.

If also may I suggest do not use these plastic gauge, always use a metal etched gauge if you are concerned about accurately. All plastic gauges while functional have are printed not etched. Also plastic gauge are flexible, you need rigid, with etched indications of measure.

Still a nice stamp you have.

stampmaster, thanks for your comment on gauges. I realize that cheap plastic and cheap metal gauges are not trustworthy. I have a metal gauge and Scott Multi-gauge which is a more stable plastic than most others. I don't know where my metal one is but I can say that in the past every time I used both metal and Scott's plastic one they gave identical readings. For my normal use I prefer Scotts because for my eyesight the extra view through the clear plastic reduces eye strain. Here are two scans using the mm gauge.

Using 20mm as the length for roulette as you say shows each perf to average slightly more than 1mm. It certainly appears to me to be roulette 18. Even a variation of 17 or 19 would verify the stamp as 18 since Mahler does not mention 19 as a variant and he classified a count of 17 to actually be a variation of 18.