Would You Pay $13 For A Forged "Silver Tax" Overprinted Stamp?

Or maybe these are genuine?



Jim

https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-stamps-...047675.l2557

I could buy my own rubber stamp for that much and make a complete set.

No reason to think they are genuine.

The same handstamp font used on some "used" "narcotic" stamps.

These, I had to buy.

Jim

I love the "narcotic" stamp with the registry cancel. :-)

As many of you know I have a one frame exhibit of the narcotic handstamp provisionals. It was first seen in the Court of Honor at the international show New York 2016. I gave out a few photocopies at that time. It has since been revised. Two pages of debunking some of the philatelic forgeries were included as a conclusion. I understand the appeal of the forgeries, but cannot bring myself to add more. Except for the two handstamps used in Philadelphia and in the 2nd District New York (lower Manhattan), the genuine narcotic handstamps are quite scarce. It is there in the non-Philadelphia and New York handstamps that I will concentrate my collecting efforts, not with the garbage that was created to fool inexperienced collectors.

The only silver tax philatelic forgeries that have appeal for me are the ones that closely imitate the BEP overprints. I especially like the ones on the dark green $1, a stamp that had been exhausted in the Bureau stock long before 1934 when the Silver Tax provisional issue was created by BEP.

Although unused this looks very close to the legitimate "SILVER TAX" with letters 4mm High by 2mm wide applied in separate operations

Regarding the OP, who was Sil Ver and why was he taxed?

Sil Ver was being abused, people kept hoarding his whole family. So a more paternal government then currently exists today decided that there should be a 50% bounty on Sil Ver and his family.

With metal type (single letters that you have to set), capital letters with the big diagonals (A's, V's, and W's) are a pain in the posterior. They create spaces that are too big. So, you end up with SIL VER when someone doesn't know how to use shims/spacers.

For those fascinated with philatelic forgeries of the first Silver Tax provisionals (the ones done by BEP) there is one on ebay now.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/RG17-5-Dar...AOSw4shX8VTr
Price has been reduced after I informed the seller that it is a philatelic forgery. I have this same forgery on the $1, as I have mentioned before and may even have shown it in a different thread.

Others have cautioned that by keeping these in our albums we run the risk after we are gone that they will be again offered as the genuine article. Nevertheless reference copies of these forgeries are desirable to the advanced student of these issues.