Hheeyy Bbuuddddyy! Ggoott Aa SSmmookkee??

I don't normally collect non-Scott-listed deep back of book material, but I do love plate and printing anomalies, especially ones with nice aesthetics. I had my eye on this one for quite some time, but simply wasn't willing to pony up the money. Well, an opportunity presented itself to make the stamp part of a trade, which lowered the cost considerably, so I bit.

Springer # TA236b, double impression. Fairly dramatic, more so than most 20th century double impressions one encounters.

Never saw this before. This series number is 110, which was issued in 1940.

Eric had it in his inventory at $150 for quite some time. I ogled it regularly, but just wasn't willing to shell out for what to me is an unknown commodity well outside my area.

I just love the overall eye appeal.

That's an incredible double impression. It looks like something you would view through the old-fashioned 3-D glasses (except it's not in two colors)!

I'm a bit surprised that one of the serious cigarette collectors didn't buy it. $150 isn't such a huge amount of money that it would be expected to stop that kind of collector.

Unless it's actually a somewhat common item (given that as a general rule Eric tends to price material very high). I don't know enough about this area to judge.

We're talking about an incredibly narrow collector base:

revenue stamp collectors -->
cigarette/tobacco stamp collectors -->
non-Scott-listed cigarette/tobacco revenue stamp collectors -->
non-Scott-listed cigarette/tobacco revenue stamp collectors that are interested in printing anomalies -->
non-Scott-listed cigarette/tobacco revenue stamp collectors that are interested in printing anomalies that don't already have an example

Probably not too many of those out there.

That said, this is visually dramatic enough (IMO) to appeal to revenue collectors in general or even EFO collectors ... or maybe just crazy people like myself

Actually it's a very popular area, the various tobacco taxes. That is why the Springer 9th edition is so hard to find. It is also one of the collecting areas most affected by ebay over the years, a lot of closet collectors out there. I used to play with them a bit many years ago, so I try to maintain at least a casual interest in the market.