A Revenue Stamp (?) You've (Almost Certainly) Never Seen Before

Hi

Anyone have any idea what this is?

Very thin paper, rouletted (?), bi-color, nothing on the back, faulty.

Jim

Looks like a fantasy or a counterfeit designed to cheat the government. Based on the Radway's stamp (RS193). Fascinating item, I've never seen it before.

I would not call this bi-colored, it's black on green paper. Or is the white also part of the stamp as opposed to a piece of wrapper?

Nope, it's on white paper.

Jim

The thing to do is to go through the Boston newspapers to try and find some advertising from this company. Also the city directories to try and locate an office or factory.

Calling the company "limited" also make me wonder if it was used in Great Britain to con people into thinking it was a foreign import, either to charge more or to gain an advertising edge. Since GB medicine revenues were counterfeited in several countries, it's possible that this was an American counterfeit for use in GB.

The Scranton Republican of June 30, 1899 has an article about someone dying from an overdose of Dr. A's Pain Expeller. So that fixes it in time. However, I find nothing in the BEP annual reports about printing any private die stamp for Dr. A. We can account for all the private die stamps listed in the annual reports.

The 4¢ denomination is also troubling. Yes, we know that the Branca Bitters stamp is also a 4¢ denomination. But 4¢ is not a rate for any of the proprietary medicines; rather it is the rate for chewing gum. No satisfactory explanation for the 4¢ rate on Branca Bitters has been published. we do know that it was an imported product and some have speculated that the 4¢ rate is a combination import duty plus internal revenue tax. But that is as far as the speculation goes. We would need to know what the import duty was (I do not know). Was "Dr. A's Pain Expeller" an imported product? But even then there is no precedent of a stamp that includes splitting the fees collected and crediting them to two different agencies of government.

So who printed this? Is this stamp intaglio printed? Is it offset or letterpress printed?

Intriguing to say the least.

A little further search on ebay shows a Brooklyn firm that is marketing an Anchor Pain Expeller and further research shows that it was marketed all over Europe. The ebay listings suggest a later marketing effort. That information does not help to uncover how the stamp came into being and why Boston is on the stamp, but certainly gives us a real world context for such a stamp.

Jim,

What is the gauge of the rouletting on the stamp?

It was listed here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=g...ller&f=false

Appears to be an ad in the Pittston Gazette, Thursday, August 14, 1902.

There is an interesting ad here:

http://digitalcollections.powerlibr...gazz/id/8452

The stamp looks lithographed to me. Real hard to tell what the roul. gauge is.

I appreciate the input for possible manufacturers.

If this is a bottle label or product seal of some kind, I was under the impression that it was illegal at the time to include "U. S. internal revenue" as part of the wording on your label. With the value of four cents and with "proprietary", it seems like this stamp violated all kinds of regulations.

Jim

Jim,

I agree that if this is lithographed, then it certainly is not a BEP production (besides not being listed in the annual reports). I further agree that it is violating all kinds of regulations. The tax on a medicine could not be 4¢!

Unless it was intended as a case stamp???

at 5/8¢ tax per 25¢ of retail we have a problem, Houston! 4¢ is not a multiple of 5/8¢. The only way that a case would work is a case of 16 bottles retailing at 10¢ apiece or a case of 8 bottles each retailing at 20¢. I reject the 8 bottles since the only way to package this is 2 x 4. The 16 bottles might work, but can anyone build a case for bottles of lineament retailing for 10¢ a bottle?

Even if that were the case (sorry?), the requirement was for the stamps to be on the individual bottles.

And if that is not enough of a stretch, there is no stamp for this company in the BEP Annual Reports. And the BEP besides was not using lithography in the 1898-1901 period.

Please help me understand why this is a plausible stamp for paying the Spanish-American War tax.

This pain expeller was also popular in Europe, but in that case it was manufactured there according to what I have read. So once again, I cannot find a plausible rationale for an imitation proprietary stamp to be used on exported product to Europe (part of the marketing scheme to show that this is a genuine American product). We know of an imitation of the proprietary issue of 1875 whose existence became known in Europe and has found its way to us via European ebay sellers.

No I cannot come up with a plausible scenario.

Please help me!