Medicine Revenue Experts -- What Have We Here?

I picked up some miscellaneous bank note proofs recently and among them was this piece. This is not a revenue, but I'm hoping the match and medicine brigade can offer some insight. It's an engraved label for Lactopeptine. Can anyone tell me more about it?

It appears to be a proof of a post tax facsimile label which appears to have been created by ABNCO for the New York Pharmacal Assn. ABNCO did do a few facsimile labels before companies decided they were too expensive and went to cheaper methods of printing. Schenck's is one company that comes to mind, they had an engraved facsimile with an ABNCO imprint at bottom.

Not quite sure what you mean by "facsimile" label. This looks like something that would have been used to seal a bottle, is that correct?
What is the post-tax time period?

Was Lactopeptine among the companies that produced private medicine stamps?

revcollector is the expert on this, so he can correct me if I don't get it right. But after the tax was repealed, some companies continued to print and use labels that looked like revenue stamps -- i.e., facsimiles -- because customers were used to seeing them and were thought to view them as a sort of seal of genuineness. And the company here is New York Pharmacal Association. Lactopeptine was the product.

That is correct, for 21 years customers had been told to "look for the stamp", so the companies continued the tradition. In fact, even in the last decade (and possibly still), Murray & Lanman's toilet water still has a facsimile very similar to the Lanman & Kemp stamps of the tax period printed on the foil wrapper.

Great information -- thank you! I would assume this facsimile proof was created in anticipation of the lifting of the tax. What year was that?

Hello,

This is the stamp that revcollector is referring to. You can buy the bottles with the stamp on eBay today.

Jim

Thanks for posting that. The tax lasted from 1862 to 1883.

Another bit of information.......the tax stamps will say US INT REV or somthing similar whereas the facsimiles will not.

The tax stamps also have a value, which most of the facsimiles do not. Some Brandreth's still had the values left, as did the various Hazeltines, Holman Liver Pad, Mette and Kanne (a VERY scarce fac), Mischler Herb Bitters (scarce as well), U.S. Proprietary Medicine Co. (another scarce one), and Od Chemical Co.

Here are some of the facsimile labels. I had these scans on my hard drive. I have more but they are not organized and scanned.

I have never seen the export Ayer's before. The two Swaim's are VERY scarce facsimiles.

Great facsimile examples, SPQR! Thank you for sharing.

Rusty, any idea who produced that 4¢ NY Pharmacal proprietary? ABNCo? I would assume the same bank note firm did the facsimile.

The original NY Pharmacal private die stamp was engraved in 1877 by the National Bank Note Company. The plates would eventually be passed along to the contract printers of the private die stamps until they resided in the Bureau of Engraving & Printing, the final printer of the private die stamps. Upon the end of the tax at the end of June, 1883 some of the companies requested the plates to have them converted to facsimiles. BEP defaced those plates before passing them to the companies. I do not know if NY Pharmacal was one of those companies who requested the plate used to print their private die. I rather suspect that the die used to make the plate still resides in the vaults of BEP.

Thank you, revenuermd. I wouldn't have known the answer to that question.

While vacationing in Florida in the early 1970's I found a bottle of Lanman & Kemp's Florida Water, which I purchased as a gift for my mother-in-law. Upon giving her the present, I requested that she soak off the neck label, which contained a stamp image at each end, each being the likeness of the Civil War era private die. The label used in the 1970's was a paper label, not like the foil label picture earlier in this thread. Alas they were offset printed, not engraved. One might note that sometime after the Spanish-American War era, they reverted to the Civil War stamp design for their facsimile stamps, not the Spanish-American War era private die design! But in the 1970's they were still using the facsimile labels printed on paper!