Why Imperforate Narcotic Stamps Should Be Collected In Pairs

The bottom stamp in this pair could be described as having extra fine centering... or it could be easily trimmed to be a convincing-looking imperforate single stamp.

Both of which are listed in Scott, with the imperforate variety being unvalued.

Just something to be aware of when buying these particular stamps.

Jim

That would often be a difficult thing to do. Although a few strips are fairly common in multiples, most are not. This six shows up in pairs all the time, 12 cents must have been a common rate.

Never said that it was easy!



The pairs of six cent stamps cancelled with "128" were used by Battle and Company on their 12 ounce bottles of Papine.

Why they didn't just make a 16 ounce (1 pint) size, who knows?

Guess that it made sense to somebody, at the time.

Back to my beverage.

Jim

Very nice on document usage

This thread highlights why I tend to collect only used narcotic stamps. An E. L. & Co. cancel after 1925 assures us that the narcotic stamp originated as an imperf. To the best of my knowledge,. Lilly was the firm that convinced Internal Revenue to supply both rouletted and imperf narcotic tax stamps. Lilly's machinery to apply the stamps to packages were the reason for the initial imperfs.

The problem arises that Lilly did not use all denominations and sizes of the narcotic stamps that are known imperf. On these others we have to go with the extant stamps and weigh the odds that we have a genuine imperf. Isn't that what we do with First Issue perfs and part perfs? This is an excellent forum to explore these questionable items with those who have the experience and knowledge to authenticate the imperfs.

Thanks to Jim we can often see how these stamps were used on packaging.