An Illegal Usage Of An Official Stamp As Revenue

R156-158 are provisional overprints. These are simply improper/illegal usages. Different animals.

Learning all the time

If these can be shown to be Michigan Mutual cancels they would still have value, although I do not know exactly how much. Although they are not the listed provisional overprints, they would command a premium. It would be worth asking Richard Friedberg for his opinion if you have the opportunity.

Based on the initials and dates, they appear to align, although the cancellation style differs from the majority shown in the PF search for R156-158. That said, there's enough variance even within those that are certed, that this doesn't necessarily mean anything.

There's definitely a premium above and beyond a normal postal cancel, but as a general rule I've not seen anywhere near the same premiums given to R156-58 or even the smaller-format unlisted IR overprints. I've seen sellers attempting to get large premiums where the manuscript includes "IR" or "I.R." as part of the cancel, but even then the premiums are in terms of tens or at most hundreds of dollars, and those almost always go unsold.

It's a very (1) uncertain, (2) unproven, and (3) narrow market segment. It probably falls under the "whatever you can get for it" umbrella.

But yes, as Bart says, Richard would be the one to ask.

Thanks for the context guys. Interesting that these were a pick up in a junk box from a Michigan auction house in October. You never know what you will find. It's a bit late tonight but tomorrow I'll post the best revenue find from the lot.

While agree with Dan on the proper ID of these (you wouldn't consider them R157s) 1typesetter brings up an interesting point with the dates. From Sloan's column of July 31 1948: The stamps were used by the Michigan Mutual Life insurance co., on each of five days from July 8th to 12th, 1898, on insurance policies to bridge over the period during which the necessary revenue stamps could not be obtained from the local Internal Revenue office." The law became effective July 1 of that year so apparently these may be what they did before they got their fancy hand stamp. Checking Siegel I see several with similar penmanship. I guess they are pre-provisionals. I wouldn't call them illegal use as in the same Sloan's column he states: "so far as known no authority had been granted the company to make up the stamps but it is understood that their usage was accepted by the Detroit officials of the Internal Revenue Bureau. "