How You Started In Revenues?

I see lots of 4-6 stamp blocks, how difficult is it to find unused larger blocks of the series 1917 Doc's, R228-239?

For me it was the cancels of the 1st issue that caught my fancy in about 2000, especially the printed and fancy cancels, with the myriad of companies as well as the variety of denominations and designs of the stamps themselves.

Then came plate varieties, then documents.

John S Bobo

Bobo was not exactly the best way to begin, hopefully you did not get taken too badly in those early days.

I agree. No I did not!

Herbert Portnoy anyone?

He used to advertise in the ARA magazine, but I do not remember him doing shows on the east coast, so I do not remember ever meeting him.

Chicago/Skokie. Herbie "I hate NY'ers" Outstanding stock of Revenues. His brother US stamps and coins. Also outstanding.

Hating NY'ers probably cost him if he had a good stock, there were a number of serious revenue collectors here.

Herbie

I expanded into other foreign revenues when I saw this colorful Ethiopia giant which came in a huge booklet.


Edited to add:




Blocks of 6-8 or other appropriate sizes of that series as plate number blocks are a challenge.

An early ebay purchase, sometime around 1998, was a number of RU playing card proprietary die stamps. As I was an art director/designer they were right up my alley.

I am really starting to love revenues, documents, and stamped documents both USA and foreign. I love looking at and learning about all the items and stamps everyone posts here - thank you for starting this thread.

Sounds like you are having the same experience that I am having, this is why I started the thread, just to hear others share how they became interested in revenues, and what they collect.

Even though I appreciated the nicely designed stamps, the revenue section of the catalog was never that interesting to me, I figured they are not postage stamps, and I read here and there that it was an area that was not collected seriously by that many people in the past. My understanding now is that this is changing, and the evidence of that is seeing how many people on this forum are extremely knowledgeable about revenues and have great collections of them.

For me it was probably almost from the beginning. When dad essentially gave me his collection when I was a kid there was an oleomargarine stamp, one of the vehicle stamps from the 1940's and maybe a couple documentaries. So I had interest.
Later on I got a few first issues in a lot I bought, and it sort of went from there.
I don't have a great collection- most of the cheap first issues, a few better, a few of the less expensive imperf/part perf, some on documents, a few second and third, and some other stuff.

I made my own pages for first through third issues, but I'm not all that happy with the first issue pages