2015 APS Congress Book

I recently purchased a copy of the 2015 APS Congress Book.

For you revenuers who are interested, one of the articles is about the National Firearms Act of 1934.

Of special interest are illustrations of some ultra rare special tax stamps. Terence Hines in his Special Tax Stamps of the United States lists them with many in the single digits as far as number of taxpayers.

The illustrations in the APS book are all Specimens from the archives of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

I'm picking nits, but the Congress Book is published by the American Philatelic Congress, not by the American Philatelic Society (APS). While the Congress is, like most speciality societies in the United States, an affiliate of the APS, they are separate and distinct organizations.

You're right. My bad.

RY8 on document should not be very scarce. Potentially there are many more times RY8s than RY6s. For now the RY11 will be scarce, but as time goes on it should be no scarcer RY8. Interesting that we cannot estimate the number of automatic weapons being transferred, since the Congress passed a law at the urging of the gun manufacturers and the NRA that effectively eliminated the stamp serial numbers.

Some time back in an article in the American Stamp Dealer & Collector, I noted that RY2 had a production run of about 1600 (serial numbers 1 to 1600). That lasted until the late 1960's when new orders were placed for the $200 stamp. By the mid to late 1980's they needed over 45,000 more stamps for all the sales and transfers of automatic weapons. To reiterate, that's 1600 for the first 22-23 years and 45,000 for the next 20 years. I would guess that the next 24 years the numbers were substantially greater than 45,000. Maybe 90,000? And those were almost all RY8. That stamp, even on license, cannot be all that scarce. And we are expected to pay over $100 for one of the RY8's on license? Not me! To date we collectors are expected to subsidize the automatic weapons collectors.

Practically every document seen on ebay is an RY8, and the same with those found at shows.