Rs390 St Louis Provisional On Ebay

Hi,

There is a listing on ebay for a RS390, the St Louis Provisional for Van Dyke Bitters Co. (item #383615361974). I know very little about these and the two images I found online (and the one in Scotts) have a couple of differences with the one listed. Seems a bit suspicious, but as I mentioned, I don't have any experience with M&M provisionals.

Anyone care to comment on this stamp.

I saw it earlier today. The scan looks OK to me; the letters that are a bit off kilter on this example match the example sold by Siegel. This example is a darker blue, but I would not consider that suspicious from a scan. In any event it is not setting off any obvious alarms.

These were locally printed in St. Louis, so they should have a certain crudeness to them.

This example is missing a period after the name at the bottom, but I have never heard of any counterfeits. It should be glazed paper, so seeing it in person would be a good idea.

Genuine one here ; http://rdhinstl.com/mm/rs390.htm

Cancel looks okay.

Sellers very first item. Hope it is a good one.

at first glance seems to be the the real thing. an in person exam would be required to confirm it. they are not common items. an extension for a PF certificate would be advisable if the seller would agree to it.

Here's an article on these stamps:

http://1898revenues.blogspot.com/20...hermann.html

Here is the one sold by Siegel
https://siegelauctions.com/lot_grd....ubmit=Search

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I'm having a hard time seeing it so I've put a "good" RS390 side-by-side with the ebay listing below (none of the RS390 images were very high res). I'd discount the very big difference in color, who knows what they used to take the picture/scan. But in addition to the missing period after "Co" and the comma at the end that revcollector mentioned, there is a comma missing after "package" (second line), and the comma after "TAX" at the top looks penciled in.


Very interesting in any case.

1typesetter, thanks for the link, I had not seen that one.

As mentioned before, these were done on the spur of the moment as basic typeset stamps, so some variations are not only possible but likely. And this is a very rare stamp, with few known. On the other hand, with the technology available today, this would have to be looked at very carefully; the paper is really important here.

A careful examination of the purple cancel would also be necessary. A modern reproduction would show that it was printed at the same time as the stamp itself, which would not be true of the original.

I opened up three tabs in the browser with the ebay lot, the Siegel lot and the image from the St. Louis Provisionals article. What is clear after flipping between the lot and the references is that characters in "INTERNAL REVENUE, 2½ c." look subtly different. The gap between the "N" and the "T" and the "T" and "E" of "INTERNAL" is wider in the reference examples.

Can zero feedback sellers offering exotic or rare stamps be trusted?

after a review of my reference materials, the odds on it being real are slim. I can overlook one piece of missing punctuation, but not three. there is no mention of any missing punctuation on any of the other known companies issues. even given the scarcity of meany of these items the great collectors of the past would not have missed that type of missing detail.
there are too many questions that need answers. If the seller is willing to allow a buyer time to submit the item to the PF or submit it him/her self that would resolve the issue.
as for the sellers first time revenue issue I have seen and gotten meany nice items that were in otherwise mediocre collections or accu

umulations. sorry new machine different keyboard w/ touchscreen and ham hands. mike

I don't think the punctuation is the issue; if it is a fake it has almost certainly been copied from an image of a genuine example. There are too many similarities in the typography to think otherwise.