Is This A Genuine Imperf. Narcotic Strip Stamp? (Rja71A)

As long as we're talking about 25 cent narcotic strip stamps, here is the recently-listed-in-Scott purple version, RJA71d.

My notes show that five copies of this variety are known; not sure if that is accurate or not.

Also, as far as I am aware, the uncommon-to-rare purple types were only used around the WWII years, so the year date on this copy helps to authenticate it as purple.

Anyone want to express a value for such an item?

Jim

Jim,

I also have one of the purple 25¢ with manuscript cancel of 1-28-48. I certainly advocated for the listing of the RJA71d as well as the delisting of the imperf purples. There are four listed purples that I still seek, RJA44d 2¢; RJA47d 2¢; RJA50d 5¢ and RJA55d 16¢. I have never seen any of the 2¢ or 5¢, so much so that I have begun to doubt their existence.

The RJA71a imperf was first listed in the Scott's U.S. Specialized in 1983. I do not know who advocated for its listing.

This is a portion of the narcotic stamps listing in the 1973 Scott Specialized catalog, the first time that they were listed since 1928.

I think that Scott relied entirely on suggestions from the American Revenue Association for their listing, and they in turn relied on results from Lou Alfano's poll of specimens in collector's hands at the time, many of which he probably never saw in person.

Without sounding disrespectful of those that are perhaps no longer with us, I would also suggest that perhaps some mistakes might have been made at the time in identifying violet versus purple shades, especially since these same mistakes continue to be made to the present day.

Jim

Louis Alfano had a tremendous personal collection of narcotic stamps (which I saw numerous times). He also saw a number of the larger collections around at the time and was very much interested in getting Xerox copies of the scarcer material from other collectors in the 60's and 70's. It took him several years to produce the listings, and he tried hard to be as accurate as possible.

Checked with one other prominent revenue dealer and he, too, says he has never seen an RJA71a. This imperf was not part of the original listing that Louis Alfano succeeded in getting into the scott Specialized in 1973. To repeat, from my earlier post, it was part of John C. Ruback's listing in the 1960's, but based on the lack of listing of an earliest cancel, it was not part of his personal collection. George Griffenhagen's 1971 Medicine Tax stamps Worldwide published by the American Topical Association lists three varieties of the large 25¢ narcotic. The third of these varieties (after the rouletted 7 and rouletted 3 ½) appears to be an imperf and he lists a date as 1929. I say "appears" although the word "imperforate" is missing from the description.

Griffenhagen's listing is based on an unpublished listing by Alfano, who stated that the listing was done in cooperation with Sherwood Springer, John C. Ruback, and John W. Bobo. While I do not have the unpublished 1970 Alfano listing, I trust that Griffenhagen reports all that Alfano listed.

The difficulty with Springer and Bobo is that they reported everything that they had seen. Later students have tended to drop those listings that could not be authenticated. Without straying afield to the early provisionals, the listings of the permanent series varieties have stood up fairly well. It is the imperfs that are the most troublesome to authenticate. Surely an Eli Lilly printed cancel beginning in 1925 is usually sufficient to authenticate an imperf. Later a number of other companies used some of the imperforates,but they may also have trimmed some rouletted stamps and therein lies the difficulty of authenticating the imperfs with small margins.

Alfano does in fact list the 25 cent violet, under the imperforate section of the definitive issues, under "Type D" (the large size strips).

He assigned a value of $20, which seems to be pretty much nearly his highest catalog value for any of these stamps (one stamp he values at $25).

Jim

I must have a copy of this list buried somewhere, I knew Louis quite well back in the day.

Not an imperf., but just showing that Lilly did use the 25 cent stamps (at least in 1920 they did).

Jim

Jim,

It turns out that I, too, have a 1920 Lilly use of the 25¢ rouletted large size narcotic, same date of May 21, 1920. This predates the introduction of the imperforate narcotic stamps (the earliest recorded date of an imperf narcotic stamp that I have is 2-1-1925).

The only reference that I have found to what seems to be the discovery copy of RJA71a is shown below.

Does anyone know who bought this collection?

Jim

https://stampauctionnetwork.com/y/y93446.cfm

Eric would be the first one to come to mind.

I do have my suspicions about the purchaser. If I am correct the collection is in a vault and has not been looked at since it was purchased. A shame.

I do have a black and white photocopy (not always crisp) of the early handstamps that Tolman sent to me many years ago. But I never bothered to pursue the permanent narcotic tax issues at that time.

What would be the point of that, I wonder.

Bart,

There are collectors out there whose guiding principle is "whoever dies with the most toys, wins."