Well, That's Certainly One Way To Pay 2 Cents Tax.

One for my improper use collection, and definitely one of the more colorful combinations of stamps. They apparently ran out of 1-cent documentaries (this was early in the tax period and on the west coast, so it's plausible) and so put together proprietary battleships in an amount adding up to the missing cent (5/8c + 1/4c + 1/8c).

There isn't any ready indication that this is contrived, in my opinion.

So was it legit to use proprietaries in place of documentaries? They certainly went to a lot of trouble for the penny.

No, it was considered an improper/illegal use.

While it was nominally against the regulations, there is no documented prosecution of the use of a proprietary stamp on a document. The reason cited is that there was no intent to avoid paying the tax.

Given the location I would think this probably a genuine usage, and not contrived. If it was NY, or another big east coast city it might be different.

That's an interesting perf pattern on the right side of the 1/4 cent battleship. Not quite as vertical as the others. A nice document.