Revenue Stamps: Undated Reds.

The "dated reds" march through time unchanged except, except for the year being overprinted on them: series of 1940, series of 1941, etc. I have a couple that have no date overprint. What year are these?

Thanks.

Don

Don,

1 cent through $20 are 1954. $30 through $10,000 are 1958.

Typesetter,
Thanks for your quick reply.

Any idea why the government did this? It's unimaginative and odd, especially at a time when the post office was getting increasingly creative in producing stamps. Didn't the BPE do the work for both IRS and USPS?

Printing a stamp, then, before releasing it, overprinting it seems to me an odd way to do things. Post Office occasionally overprints, but that's an existing stamp overprinted to honor someone, e.g. Molly Pitcher, or for some special need, e.g. the occupation of Cuba.

Don

The reason for the Series overprints was the solution to discourage the reuse of stamps. Documents were required to kept a minimum of three years. Overprinting gave only a two year window for permitted use. After two years they were demonetized and could not legally be used. Thus a Series 1940 stamp was only valid for 1940 and 1941. Since the documents on which they were to be used had to be kept on file for three years, any soaked off stamps could not be reused in 1943 or later.