1898 Revenues: A St. Louis Puzzle -- A Sight Draft Taxed in 1903?

Saturday, March 19, 2011

A St. Louis Puzzle -- A Sight Draft Taxed in 1903?

Unlike John, who serves half-a-world away, I have been fortunate enough to attend the annual meeting of the American Revenue Association in St. Louis this weekend. I've traveled through St.Louis before (stopped long enough to visit the Arch and photograph the famous Eds Bridge), but this is my first real visit to the "Gateway to the West," and to the annual St. Louis Stamp Expo World Series of Philately qualifying show.

Eads Bridge photo from the City To River Blog

It's always a joy to meet long-time friends and make new ones at philatelic events, and the folks who run the St. Louis Stamp Expo have been great hosts. Kudos to them for a great show!

Preparing for the show got me thinking about St. Louis-related material in my 1898 revenue collections. I've previously blogged about some of my better St. Louis items: a letter of credit from the National Bank of Commerce in St. Louis; a wonderful $2.50 promotional credit certificate taxed as a promissory note from the Hammar Bros. White Lead Company of St. Louis; and two days ago, an export bill of lading from the Luedinghaus-Espenschild Wagon Company for wagon parts being shipped to Cuba.

Collins Collection Company Sight Draft

St.Louis, Mo.

June 12, 1903

In comparison, today's subject document, a sight draft from the Collins Collection Company is extrodinarily unremarkable, save its June 12, 1903 date. June 1903? That's nearly TWO years after the July 1, 1901 repeal of the tax on checks and drafts drawn at sight. Even if one considered this to be a draft other than at sight (note the endorsement "with exchange and cost of collection") which were subject to taxation until July 1, 1902, this is still nearly a year later.

Why it was taxed 2-cents has long puzzled me with the document languishing in my "what's up with this file" for years. One might expect a year date problem occurring in January, not June. Regrettably the back is blank suggesting the draft was never paid and offering no clue about a dating error. Most collectors I show it to simply shrug and hand it back.

One plausible explanation, offered so long ago I forget by whom, is that an ambitious clerk had pre-stamped a stack of blank forms with the two cents required for sight drafts and the Collins firm never bothered to attempt to obtain a refund for the unnecessary stamps when the tax was repealed. That makes some sense, but to still be using forms one, or more likely, two years late still seems a bit suspect.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone with other explanations, or access to early 1900's St. Louis City directories, as I've not had much success tracking the Collins Collection Company either.

The 2012 ARA annual meeting will be held in conjunction with the Garfield-Perry March Party show in Cleveland, Ohio March 23-25, 2012.

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Unusual Ink on the 1898 Series Dollar Values

THESE STAMPS ARE BOTH SCOTT R191! From fugitive ink to color changelings with unknown origins. These are both copies of R191. Can only exposure to light produce the color changes you see in stamp on the right? Or possibly a soak in bleach or other chemical? I doubt it. These stamps have so many examples of changelings that there must be something else happening. The ink used on this dark green series of stamps was different than that known on any other BEP printed stamps, never mind the varnish square. It is likely the BEP was experimenting with ink on this issue. Inks are discussed further if you click on the stamps.

Collecting Cancels

Welcome to 1898 Revenues, a website that features the stamps used to pay the Spanish-American war taxes imposed by the US Government starting in July, 1898. But while this site features those stamps in general, a focus is on their cancels, and on the firms that applied them. Unlike US postage stamps, which were canceled by the US Post Office and now Postal Service, revenue stamps were ordered to be canceled by their users in such a way that the identity of the user and the date was included in the cancel. This makes the collecting possibilities nearly endless, so that a single variety of stamp, for example, the 2 cent battleship stamp intended to pay documentary taxes, had potentially millions of different users, and therefore as many different cancels. Please browse the site and discover the collecting possibilities, made so much more accessible now through online sales. Cancels on these stamps have become much more interesting and accessible with the massive amounts of archival and historical data available on line. Rather than hours spent in libraries or with heavy volumes to identify cancels, search engines allow for cancel sleuthing at home.

Battleship Proprietary Printed Cancels: Updating the Joyce/Chappell Lists

In the 1950s, Morton Dean Joyce updated a list of printed cancels on the battleship proprietaries compiled by Clarence Chappell. Joyce's is a very long list consisting of more than one hundred companies and thousands of cancel dates. In the years since Joyce completed his list, many new cancel dates have been demonstrated to exist, and an update of the 1950s list is needed.

This site is attempting that update. Using the Joyce/Chappell lists and the former collection of Henry Tolman (ARA #25) as a base, a gradual effort will be made to post updated lists to the best of my knowledge, making a call for those that can contribute new dates and new images of those cancels.

Following in this column are quick links to excel files of these lists by company. Also are links to the posts that I have made on this blog regarding these companies and their cancels.