Honduras Specimen Revenue Stamps - I Have Questions

I've seen these Honduras specimen revenues before, and I think they're great looking stamps, but I don't know much about them. Collections like these that I've seen for sale are usually listed at $250 - 300. I found this group for $24, so I picked it up. I have two questions. 1) I have only ever seen these as specimens; are these something like essay stamps that were never issued for regular use? 2) Did I get a good deal, or do stamp dealers have these way over priced? Any info is appreciated. Thanks!

Vastly wild guess.
I recall reading many moons ago, these types of punctures were made by the printer Waterlow and Sons?
to prevent re-use.
Values. Unknown.

Gum or no gum on these?

This one is going on e bay for $333.00 ! Anyway I don't trust any
of these specimen stamps.These are left overs for the most part.
maybe real maybe not.Just too many of them on the market.
I think you paid the right price...

The ones I picked up are gummed.

There's an imprint under the designs, typical of Honduras engraved postage stamps. That would tell us who the printer was. If pre-WWII, I'd guess that like the postage stamps, there'd be like 3 different printers with their imprints on different issues. WWII and later appear to be all Waterlow, for postage anyway. So we can get a possible (large) date range from that info. Who is it/are they? Like Rod, Waterlow comes to my mind.

If Waterlow printings: the reason I asked about gum is that (I believe) during WWII, the Waterlow vaults were accidentally flooded by firefighters, affecting much if not all of their stored proofs, trial colors, specimens, etc. So while clean, they're typically no gum. People have gotten excited over finding (expensive) Rhodesia Double Heads that look like they're in the issued colors or in "error" colors, and in blocks besides. But those are just trial colors from the vault and pretty worthless. Rhodesia specialists don't like them because they've been soaked and maybe bleached, so the colors can't be trusted to be true.

These Honduran revenues are like Cinderellas where the quantity around is probably not known and there may not be any price guide particularly for proofs/specimens. So, value/pricing is in the eye/heart of the beholder. To me $28 is a good deal for a lot of that size and variety. The ones selling for hundreds are pretty much wishful thinking; there's no demand to justify that. $10 each for punched specimens? -- pfagh. There's nothing to mistrust here except somebody's valuation; the punch and SPECIMEN overprint are well known on other stamps. Also few fakers have engraved their "creations" convincingly; it's too much work and why bother with revenues that most have never seen?

I can't recall ever seeing used Honduran revenues in a collection, so I can't say if these were ever used or not. I particularly like the beer stamps (cerveza).

Hy-brasil, thank you for the informative response. All of the stamps are imprinted with American Bank Note Co. Litho.

Shown here, but not priced.
1951
http://www.hondurasstamps.com/revdoc1951.html

Waterlow and Sons, with punctures here..

http://www.hondurasstamps.com/revdoc1931.html

Well done, Rod! And not engraved here, but (mostly) litho. Plus there is a catalog of revenues from 2005.

That's it then: Waterlow specimens of the period I think were always overprinted with their name and in that style and with a punch.

Note that Mount-this has more values than the website collection does for the page shown(!)

Rod22, thanks for the links. I was wondering how old these were. I've never seen any of these 1951 revenues without the specimen overprints let alone used, so I'm guessing they never got printed for actual use?

Cheers HB.

MT : The rest is beyond my knowledge, why not email the webmaster of that rather nice Honduras link ? He may able to shed some light, and post your information here for us to share.