Revenue Counterfeits

I would like to see if anyone has any information/knowledge/history on these counterfeits. I know nothing of their history. I picked them up on ebay over the last couple of years.

1.





2.



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4.

The first couple should just go in the trash.

However the one with the Boston "cancel" is highly collectible.

There are at least two known varieties.

Shown below is the other one.

I have them valued at $250 each in my catalog.

Jim

The first couple should go into a reference collection, NOT the trash. And there are provisionals similar to the 10 cent small banknote but this one has a postal cancel.

It's also a first Bureau.

Assuming it is watermarked, those are some of the stamps with the 1898 provisional uses. Plus people just used what they had available when they added their own IR.

Yup, although without it being on document, there's no way to confirm that it was a legitimate use.

#2 above looks quite bogus, as the partial cancel appears to be a postal cancel. That stamp is known used as a revenue, however. See below.

Some of the provisional "IR" manuscript cancels can be quite colorful and attractive.

Jim,

Do you know the story behind #4?

I received this in the mail today from a recent ebay auction. The certificate declined an opinion, which I took to mean probably counterfeit. The certificate is kind of old and I do know much about the revenue specimen stamps. So is it a counterfeit or were they just not sure?

Revhound,

I vaguely remember a discussion here about them some time ago. May want to do some searching.

I believe that Dan has one on his website.

There has been no consensus reached, as far as I know, as to what they are.

I personally consider them school training stamps.

But they could also be "demonstration" stamps, put out by revenue stamp agents to show what the stamps looked like, without having to actually use a real stamp.

They could also be foreign in origin, meant to simulate the new-fangled revenue stamps that just came out.

Clearly, they are not true counterfeits, as they just look too crappy. Maybe they were meant to fool semi-blind people, I don't know. Plus, they're already "cancelled," so who could possibly use them?

Heck, they could even be leftover props from some long-forgotten Western/Civil War movie from the 1950s or something.

I'm sure that there are all kinds of theories from others, with some adamant that their assumption is correct, and other ideas are not. But whatever.

Most of the copies that I have seen are defective.

There is a second design of the one that you showed, but I don't have a great image of it. Total of three known designs.

They are pretty scarce; rare even.

Jim