Curtis Collection Revenue Acquisitions From Siegel

I received my winnings yesterday from Siegel's auction of The Curtis Collection (Part 2).

Siegel, while a high-profile auction house, isn't the best in the world when it comes to U.S. revenues and the writeups that items receive. Their choices as to which lots get highlighted versus those that get short shrift is frequently puzzling. Additionally, they don't always perform due diligence in their fact checking. It's one thing for an ebay seller to get it wrong, but for one of the nation's foremost auction houses to phone it in is inexcusable.

That said, if their laziness contributed to my not having to stretch farther for these pieces, I'm not complaining.

Bart (revcollector) and I discussed quite a few of the lots prior to the auction, and I appreciate his expertise and input, especially as he has an opportunity to view many of the lots in hand, since he is located in New York.

The first document is the one lot I really wanted (that I could afford anyway; there were plenty of high-priced balance lots that I would have loved to own but were well beyond my means). It presented a bit of a difficulty though, as it was the second-to-last lot in the entire auction, which meant that impulse buys would be severely curtailed.

It is an improper/illegal use of Scott #77, 15-cent Abraham Lincoln, as a revenue stamp, on a demand for payment, taxed as an inland exchange and paying the correct rate. Siegel wrote it up as an "overpaid revenue use" presumably because they think every small document is a check, which (1) is inaccurate, and more importantly (2) the implication of an incorrect usage can cast doubt as to the authenticity of the document. Were any bidders put off from bidding because of the writeup?

Regardless, it is a very scarce usage of the stamp and I'm glad the bidding didn't go crazy. The document was apparently sold by Siegel once before, in 1993. They got the document wrong back then too, but they added some commentary that they didn't include this time around:

On July 18, 1869 Auditor of West Virginia check apportioning funds for the schools of the township Union in the county Lincoln, ms. cancel, a very rare usage of the 15c Lincoln stamp, which must be more than a coincidence.

Whether the use of a Lincoln stamp on a document in Lincoln County was intentional or merely coincidence, we'll never know.




The second document wasn't one I intended to bid on, as both Bart and I felt the estimate was absurdly low, and I assumed that the lot would sell for a much higher price. It too, was misdescribed by Siegel. For one thing, the writeup was minimal... only a single sentence. Once again Siegel called it a bank check. About the only superlative they used was the word "unusual".

Unusual? How about damned scarce if not outright rare! R79a, the imperforate $1.60 is never found on document. After the auction, I asked both Richard Friedberg and Eric Jackson how many R79a on documents they have had pass through their combined 80ish years of inventory. The answer? Zero. I can find records of only three other reported examples: one in the 2008 Spink auction of the Cunliffe Collection, which brought $1,800 + BP, and two documents named but not pictured, in Mike Mahler's book "A Catalog of United States Revenue-Stamped Documents of the Civil War Era" (a must-have book for anyone interested in U.S. revenue documents).

The stamp by itself off document currently catalogs $1,500, up from $1,400 in the 2015 catalog. I assumed the bidding would easily be in the 4 figures. When I saw the lot about to close at $275, I just couldn't let it go for that, bid once, and won the lot.

In my opinion, if Siegel had given the document a proper writeup and a realistic estimate range, I feel it would have gone much higher.

Richard viewed the auction lots in person, so I asked him why he didn't bid on the document. His answer was that he hadn't looked at the document as he was focused on the large balance lots.

The stamp is just in along the frame line at top right, but the other 3.5 margins are exellent. It is a bottom sheet margin example that gets progessively wider towards the bottom of the stamp. It is unquestionably genuine.

Another Lincoln connection, which Bart pointed out to me as I completely missed it: the documented is dated April 15, 1865, the day Lincoln was assassinated.

Picking up the R79a really relieved the pressure. Like you were playing with house money after that.

Congratulations!

if they highlighted it too much you might not be able to afford it anymore

Without a doubt. Still, they aren't doing consigners any favors. Even though this time it worked in my favor, it's the principle.

As a point of information the 15 cent is an "order for payment" rather then a "demand for payment".
Both of these items deserved much better descriptions; my impression is that they did not even read the $1.60 promissory note and just called it a check based on size. And $1.75 is the correct rate for this document; both were paid under the post August 1, 1864 inland exchange rate of 5 cents per $100 or fraction.

Given a date of July 18,1869, I suspect the use might well have been intentional although obviously it doesn't have to be. Well after the war, the taxes were 7 years old, and there should have been someone in the county seat with revenue stamps available. Remember the tax was paid by the person due the money who would have received this document from the County Superintendent of Free Schools and would have had to take it to the office of the Auditor of West Virginia to get paid. Between those two locations it seems likely that revenue stamps could have been found.

Revcollector and revenuecollector, Siegel would have done better to have experts such as yourselves contracted for this sale. But then again knowledge is power and you were duly rewarded for your pursuit. Congrats and thanks for the nice write up which I enjoyed.

Actually I have tried in the recent past (I have some modest experience in writing lots), and was politely told they do it all with the people they have.

They made some other mistakes as well, the most egregious of which was lot 1082. At least 5 people including myself told them that was a proof pair and not a stamp pair, but they ran it anyway.
Lot 1313 was listed as a block of Scott R222, but it is actually a future delivery provisional. Note the purple F.D. handstamps all over the block. To be fair, it is not listed in Scott for some reason even though they have been known about for a very long time, and they clearly were not aware of it.

If someone (not me!) had revenues worthy of a major auction, where should they take them? I thought Siegel for sure, but now I wonder. Failing to even consider the second opinion of qualified revenue experts is not a good thing.

It would depend a lot on what they were; What types, how rare and how valuable.

This piece was interesting to me in that it isn't very often I see something like this from my neck of the woods.

I could easily understand the lack of revenue stamps in this area at this time. Lincoln County was only a couple of years old at this point and Hamlin didn't become the permanent county seat until that same year (1869). With a population of around 2000 (1870 census), there just weren't that many people around at this time. The county is fairly isolated with mountains that are close together. I can't imagine trying to travel in the area without roads. Even today, it takes 30 minutes or more by car with good roads (good being a relative term :)) to get to one of the nearby population centers. In the 1860's on horseback, it was likely an all day trip. So I imagine that they used what they had and it was probably an intentional usage.

Another interesting thing is that I have never heard of the township of Union in Lincoln County. Couldn't find any information on it at all. I don't know if it no longer exists or whether it was renamed. If anyone knows, I would be interested in finding out.

Check this out:

http://usgwarchives.net/wv/lincoln/...0000read.htm
Open the link http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/linc...census/1870/ and click on images 475A to 480B

I think Matthew Adkins is on page 0479a