Cotton Broker Cancels: Price, McCormick & Company Futures Contract

Price, McCormick originally featured here back in 2012 based on their trading at the New York Stock Exchange, where the firm had members with seats until 1900.  The firm's cancels have also shown up in special posts on perfins, as Price McCormick used a "PM&Co" perfin on some stamps in addition to their usual CDS.  A PM clerck was caught in 1898 in a revenue stamp fraud, where he purchased improperly canceled stamps from other clerks and messengers at 75 cents on the dollar and pocketed the balance.  The New York Times reported that Price McCormick used $200 worth of stamps per day, so he was able to make $300 fairly quickly before the revenue inspectors caught up with him.

Today is featured a Price, McCormick cotton futures contract, made through their membership at the New York Cotton Exchange.

September 6, 1899 contract for the delivery of bales cotton in January, 1900.  Transaction taxed at $1.24, representing a one cent tax for each one hundred dollars of the future delivery contract, which totaled $12,340.

Price McCormick used a double ring CDS on the one dollar stamp and smaller single ring CDS cancels on the battleship stamps.

Bill of Exchange Fragments: Lyon & Company

John B. Lyon was member #1976 of the Chicago Board of Trade, and traded, for most of his career, under the firm name Lyon & Company at the head office at 12 Sherman Street in Chicago.  The firm was large enough to have multiple offices in the US and beyond.

Reverse side of document fragment:

LYON & CO.

JAN

26

1900

NEW YORK.

Front side of document fragment:

From The American Elevator & Grain Trade, January 15, 1905:

John B. Lyon, was a member of the Chicago Board of Trade for forty-six years, joining immediately after arriving in Chicago, and had participated in more "deals" in wheat and corn and had handled larger amounts of corn as a shipper than any other grain man in the West. Although of late years poor health had limited his activities, his last trades were closed out only on the day pre- ceding his death. Between 1860 and 1879 the name of J. B. Lyon stood for immense deals in wheat and corn, straightforward honesty and great wealth. In August of 1872, following the short wheat crop of 1871, Mr. Lyon ran a "corner," in the course of which the price soared to $1.62. The Lyon holding was estimated at 25,000,000 bushels, and stocks of wheat in Chicago were only 6,000,000 bushels. The deal failed, however, owing to the rushing of new crop wheat to market and the passing of a large amount of damp wheat as No. 2 spring for delivery. When Mr. Lyon saw what was coming, he sold out and the deal is said to have cost him $800,000. Pre- ceding this deal Mr. Lyon had run several successful corners in corn in the middle '60s, in which he shipped the bulk of the crop to Buffalo for three successive years, and had the making of prices practically his own way. It was his custom to charter all the boats available on the lakes and move corn east so deliveries could not be made. In 1860 he ran a wheat deal for Angus Smith of Milwaukee, in which heavy profits were realized. Mr. Lyon handled so much corn in the '70s that the trade always was watching for a corner. In 1879 he shipped 50,000,000 bushels of corn. Mr. Lyon formed a number of partnerships, but the firm name generally was J. B. Lyon & Co. until he entered business with John Lester, when the style was Lyon & Lester. Earlier he was connected at different times with G. J. Boyne, now with Armour & Co., W. Meddows and J. Swartz. For more than twenty years he conducted, in connection with his grain operations, an immense sugar plantation at Patterson, La. He owned the town of Bellefontain, Miss. At Ocean Springs, Miss., he had at the time of his death fifteen miles of oyster beds, and the entire Hollinger Island, off Mobile. His holdings of pine lands in the South and of real estate in and adjacent to Chicago were also large.

New York Stock Brokers: Lawton, Flint & Co; Lee, Kretschmar & Co; Maxwell & Scoville; McIntyre & Wardwell

Today is a catch-all day for several firms that have no representation in my usual reference books like King's View of the New York Stock Exchange.  I've not found much in the way of column advertising for these firms or any pictures of their members.  So instead we just have four memos plus the insets of their accompanying cancels.  All of these come from the Eames and Moore pile of memos courtesy of David Thompson.  

Lawton, Flint stock memo of sale for 100 shares of Union Pacific Railroad.

Lawton, Flint & Co.,

25 BROAD STREET.

Lee, Livingston stock memo of sale overstamped by the new firm Lee, Kretschmar & Co.  

LEE, KRETSCHMAR & CO.

Maxwell & Scoville stock memo of sale, likely to Eames and Moore for what appears to be US Steel, for what also appears to be $47 1/8 per share.  

Now that the NYSE has gone decimal, I wonder how many investors out there know that we all once traded shares by fractions, sometimes down to the 32nd or even less?  Now with machines trading millions of shares in seconds, the buy sell spread can come down to a thousandth of a cent or less on some trades.  The old manual world of the NYSE clearing house is long gone.

MAXXXXX X SCOVILLE.

APR

22

1901

*

McIntyre & Wardwell stock memo of sale to Eames and Moore for 100 shares of something I'm still guessing at...maybe Wire? for the American Steel and Wire Company?

Mc I & W.

FEB

5

1900

NEW YORK.

New York Stock Brokers: Edmund & Charles Randolph

 Advert, Moody's Manual of Railroad and Corporation Securities, 1909

Advert, Times Dispatch, 1911

1899 and 1901 Stock sale memos; each for the sale of railroad stock, including the Southern and Union Pacific.  Note the two different handstamp cancels but similar die-cut reverse R cancels.  Edmund & Charles Randolph's company would be active for many more years.  One of their 1922 stock sale memos can be found here.

New York Stock Brokers: W. E. Tunis & Company

 

W.  E.  TUNIS & CO.

MAY  24  1900

William Tunis' entry as caricature; with accompanying "quatrain":

This ball and pins, this shirt sleeved travesty

And angler old, as nothing seem to me;

For there are cheerier balls and angling too,

King Pin of which this Phantom seems to be.

Ebay Sales: An R173 with an R190 Inverted Surcharge

The dealer buystamps currently has for sale on Ebay what appears to be a copy of an R190 with an inverted surcharge:

Listed for sale at $299.99, its a pricey rarity unlisted by Scott.  It is, very likely, quite rare.  The question is whether it should be so pricey.  A quick look at the face of the stamp provides a few cues to what we might be looking at.  First, the surcharge is a sloppy one with ink smeared across the stamp at the upper right of the surcharge, something I have not seen with Bureau surcharging.  Second, the stamp's color is not the color of an R190, but that of an R173.  Third, the stamp is rouletted,  but all R190s were hyphen perforated.

Buy Stamps tells us the following in the Ebay listing:

Now we're getting somewhere.   Mr. Henry Stolow was an infamous stamp dealer with a history of fakes, forgeries and made up stamps.  An examination of the back reveals the extensive thinning.  But we can also see the J&H Stolow brand at the bottom right:

If this is in fact a real Stolow piece of fakery, the stamp would be an interesting curiosity to have in an 1898 revenues collection.  Just don't put it into an album spot marked R190a! Also, don't pay $299.99 for it.  Maybe $5.00?

Thanks to David Thompson for calling my attention to this item.

 

R173 with Margin Inscription

 

R173r

David Thompson scan

A most reliable contributor, even after many years, David Thompson, sent in this scan of an R173 with a special margin inscription that includes a denomination notation (with $ sign!) and what are likely to be siderographer's initials.  

Cancel notes:  The year date is obviously wrong and should be 1899.  And we could be looking at a Northwestern Mutual Life cancel, though the N is oddly shaped.  I've been away from these cancels too long.  Any other possibilities/certainties?  Could it be HMLI?

Documentary Printed Cancels: Provident Savings Life Update

Red and black Provident Savings Life cancels on 1898 series revenue stamps.  All are printed cancels except for the bottom right stamp, which displays a handstamp cancel.  Five different documentary values are shown here with Provident Savings Life printed cancels.  Are there more?

Provident Savings Life cancels have featured on this website over the years.  New examples continue to emerge and expand the list of the use of printed cancels on 1898 documentary revenue stamps. The standard reference for documentary printed cancels, the Fullerton List, only covers documentary printed cancels by railroads and express companies.  Provident Savings Life and Assurance Company is the only known insurance company to use printed cancels.

In addition to the stamps seen above that are found in my collection, David Thompson sent in a scan of the R170 pair below:

R170 Pair

David Thompson scan

Several years ago I had an email discussion with Frank Sente regarding the status of these cancels and whether they were printed are not.  This post from 2010 includes some of that discussion, and the argument was made then that these cancels were printed.  The above pair of stamps does a fine job of presenting proof of their status as having been printed, which the orientation and the precision, placement and clarity of the cancels makes clear.  One hitch though is that the separation between the cancels is not proportional to the stamp dimensions.  The cancel on the right stamp above is centered to the left relative the the stamp on the right.

Below are larger versions of the stamps shown above.  I've included three copies of R170 in the stamps above because of color issues with the cancels.  There are two red and one black, and between the reds, there is a clear color difference.

R170 roulette, orange-red printed cancel

R170 roulette, red printed cancel

R170 roulette, black printed cancel

R172 roulette, black printed cancel.   

This stamp has been featured in the stamp montage at the top of this website for years.

R173p hyphen-hole, red printed cancel

R174p hyphen-hole, red printed cancel

R175 black printed cancel

R175 roulette black handstamp cancel

All of the examples of Provident Savings Life printed cancels that I have seen with a date have shown a 1900 year date.  Where are other years of the 1898 series?  Even if the firm did not begin printing cancels until 1900, shouldn't there be 1901 examples?  Or did they simply run out and chose to print no more, necessitating the production of the handstamp illustrated immediately above?

A question I have is why these cancels, now shown on many documentary values, are orphans?  By orphans I mean their apparent neglect by established collectors and catalogs.  Fullerton and others raised the status of the documentary railroad and express printed cancels; while the proprietary printed cancels have always had a special place in the revenue hobby.  Where have these stamps and their cancels been?  Have they just been ignored?  Does anyone know of an old philatelic article on the subject or a collector that may have had a small collection of these?

The small collection above began with the R170, and has been pieced together over several years through multiple purchases and one gift from Bob Hohertz.

I am always looking for new Provident cancels like these, on new stamp values or with new colors.  If you have examples, please write 1898revenues@gmail.com.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Armour & Company

ARMOUR & CO.

JUL

16

1901

CHICAGO.

Langlois scans

October 5, 1900

July 30, 1898

blue cancel

September 30, 1898

purple cancel

August 28, 1899

green cancel

June 30, 1899

New York Stock Brokers: Sutro, Scholle & Company

New York Times, December 9, 1898

Sutro, Scholle & Co.

SEP    21    1898

David Thompson scans

Soon after the canceling of the stamp above, and not too far into the 1898 tax period, Mr. Scholle left the firm Sutro, Scholle & Co.  Lionel Sutro's brother joined the firm and the firm became Sutro Brothers in 1899.  Has anybody seen a Sutro Brothers & Company cancel?  If so, please write to 1898revenues@gmail.com.

From The New York Morning Telegraph of January 5, 1899:

Boston Stock Brokes: E. D. Bangs & Company

ELISHA D. BANGS

President of the Boston Stock Exchange when he died in 1900

E. D. BANGS & CO.

JAN

16

1899

BOSTON

David Thompson scan

Mr. Bangs died in a gruesome manner.  The New York Times of September 20, 1900 explained: