OT: Feeding one of my other vices...

coinpictures

Linky

Coindexter

I'm actually fascinated by many US stamps, but I know absolutely nothing about them and am a bit intimidated by the thought of attempting yet another collection.

Rickc300

Very nice! If you decide to part company with your find I need it for my collection. For the most part, stamps have taken a long ride in the backseat as compared to my coin collection. But every once in awhile I come across something too good to pass up on. This one at the price you paid would fall in to that category...
Great find and great price!
Congrats to you!
Rick

coinpictures

<< <i>Very nice! If you decide to part company with your find I need it for my collection. >>



Not gunna happen...

While I am best classified as an "accumulator" more than a collector when it comes to stamps overall, U.S. 1st Series revenues is the one area where I have a quasi-formidable collection, and am somewhat specialized. I've been concentrating on obtaining nice SON handstamp cancelled examples, as well as preprinted cancels, both of which have taken huge jumps in value over the last 5 years or so. In fact, U.S. revenues in general have flourished over the last decade, in many cases doubling to quadrupling in value over that period.

If you want to have fun looking at some of the examples in my collection, check out www.revenue-collector.com. I have picture galleries for handstamped and preprinted cancels, as well as a reference chart for 1st-3rd series revenues...

Another few of my favorites (not comparatively to scale):

Superb example with a lovely green SON cancel.




Fairly rare stamp ($1,600 SCV) with a nice cancel; unfortunately a repaired lower left corner.




This one is fairly tough ($800 SCV or so) and it almost always requires expertization (unscupulous folks will find "jumbo" copies of perforated versions and trim off the perfs to make the stamp appear to be the more expensive imperforate or part perforate varieties). Very rare with wide margins. It's cut in on the right, but there's no doubt as to its authenticity.




An example of a part perforate strip; stamps are perforated in one direction, and imperforate in the other. This is another area where people will trim one side of a fully perforated example to simulate the more valuable part perforate stamp. Huge premiums for multiples in both the imperf and part perf stamps, since they are virtually guaranteed to be authentic (major exception being where the part perf is more expensive than the imperf and someone will take an imperf pair or block and perforate it in one direction so as to manufacture a part perf multiple).