How You Started In Revenues?

For those who collect revenues, either a small or large portion of your philatelic interests, what particular revenues first attracted your interest, and were the ones you began collecting?

I got taken to an ARA meeting at the NY Collectors Club when I was 17. A very long time ago now.

I found a page of El Salvador revenues at a show (for $7) many decades ago that fascinating me since they were so different. Fast forward half a lifetime later and I've got a ten album collection of that country's revenues and telegraph stamps, including many of Joe Ross's stamps that he used to illustrate the one-and-only recent catalog on the subject!

Michael E. Aldrich auctions in the early 80's. Really fine material was showing up.

Nils Helstrom, I had to Google Nicaraguan revenues so that I could get an idea what you collect, I saw lots of nice looking stamps, that set of Telegraph's with the 1890 date on them is very attractive. These could be used for regular postage also, or did I misunderstand?

Yes, he has lots of stuff for sale on Hipstamp, if it's the same person.

jmz5723, actually, I don't know too much about Nicaraguan revenues, my collection is El Salvador! Of course, you are not far off, as in later years Nicaragua and El Salvador got their revenues printed by the same place. They are often quite similar looking.

The E.S. telegraphs are quite scarce, but I have a nearly complete collection... those weren't used for postage to my knowledge, although some cancellations are suspiciously like postal cancellations, so it's possible (none are known on cover). El Salvador revenues, however, were often used as postage and some were overprinted for just that purpose (and are listed by Scott). Revenues were frequently used for telegraph purposes as well, to further complicate the story!

I have many uncatalogued El Salvador revenues, but as far as cataloging and publishing are concerned, my interests have swung to other areas now. One of these days I've got to find a new home for the collection, hopefully with someone more ambitious!

LOL, sorry I did mix them up, but as you said, there are similarities, not just between those two countries, but other South American countries.

US Ducks (RWs) followed by the documentary revenues used for the WWI parcel tax. It went from there, but nothing too unusual except a specialized collection of Utah State Marijuana Tax Stamp EFOs. That arose from my long EFO interest coupled with actually finding them for sale in several batches over time.

My favorite, if you can't stop it, tax it, revenue is an early 20th Century Argentine revenue series. Not the world's oldest revenue stamps, but revenue stamps for the world's oldest profession. That will give you something to Google jmz5723.

Really a tax to pay for healthcare.

Actually a tax to force the employee service provider or self-employed owner operators to pay for the government heath exam requirements as a way to dissuade participation in the otherwise legal servicing activity.


For good information and examples on the subject:
https://digital.stamplibrary.org/di...ll6/id/4625/

I have written this elsewhere. About a year after I started collecting postage stamps, the spouse of a neighbor of my mother when she was a teenager, visited my family. He told me how he visited factories in Reading, PA in the late 1930's and liberated large distilled spirits tax paid stamps from large drums. He had sold his collection when he went off to World War II and had never returned to collecting. So my intro to revenues was to those that were not listed in the Scott U.S. Specialized and that has never changed. I love doing the research into revenues that are not listed in our standard reference. Oh, and yes I do collect seriously many of the Scott listed revenues (but not the first three issues of documentary stamps, R1 - 150).

revenuermd, do you happen to collect any of the Documentary "reds" from 1914, 1917, 1940's - 50's?

I learned something today. You probably don't have a health checkup booklet containing the stamps, you need to put that on your want list.

I do collect the Series of 1914, Series of 1917, and Series 112 documentary. I also collect the cigarette tubes, silver tax, and tobacco sale tax which were overprints on the Series of 1917 stamps. The Series of 1917 documentary is listed as Type 1 and Type 2 in Scott U.S. Specialized. There is a third type printed on offset presses, but with high etch plates. This has been dubbed as a letterset printing.

I don't know how deep you go revenuermd for those documentaries so I will ask if you have the seven denomination, 1c - 15c, set of essay die proofs of the the "second parcel post issue?" Someone does, but I know not who. I do own the 20c value. As you may know they were used as the model for the documentaries of the set beginning with Scott #R228.

Edited for missing "r" in a name.