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Scarcity of Used U.S. Official Stamps |
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Alan Campbell |
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Chronicle, Vol. 47, No. 1, February, 1995 |
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Introduction |
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In 1991, Ralph Ebner, a young collector in Germany, asked for my help incompleting his set of used United States Official stamps. Over a period of months, as I searched in vain for relatively inexpensive items in a condition grade that would satisfy his exacting Germanic standards, I came to sense that many of the Official stamps were actually scarcer used than unused, and that this difference was magnified when one focused on premium quality. Dealers reported that they were never able to keep enough nice used Official stamps in stock. The increased demand was attributed by some to the ever-widening discrepancy in the Scott catalogue between the valuations for used and unused stamps: collectors new to the field, so the argument went, were consciously committing to assembling used sets on the basis of the lower outlay involved. |
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I entered this field as a relatively unsophisticated collector in the early 1980's and began by assembling a mixed used and unused set of stamps. Since at the time most of the scarcer stamps were only slightly more expensive in unused condition, I generally chose that option, betraying a typical beginner's bias that classic stamps ought to be scarcer unused than used and are certainly more handsome and impressive in that state. It never occurred to me to be suspicious of the plentiful stocks I was encountering of unused stamps that in their era of usage had never been available for sale to the general public. Gradually over the years my tastes matured, to the point where I am now more attracted to the elusive used survivors and their fragile beauty, which seems to require a more complex standard of connoisseurship. |
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The purpose of this article is to establish which Official stamps are scarcer in used condition than unused. I have settled upon three tests. First, to survey the informed and considered opinion of various experts in the field, both specialist dealers and collectors. Second, to inventory whenever possible the more comprehensive stocks of used and unused Official stamps maintained by bourse and mail-order dealers across the country. Third, to analyze earlier editions of the Scott catalogue when the pricing was less distorted by collector and investor preference for unused material. |
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Being fully aware of the many arguments that can be advanced to impeach the scientific accuracy of these tests, I still feel an obligation to put forth whatever evidence I can to prevent the recent pricing trends from being misinterpreted. But before presenting the results, it is necessary to explain how the used and unused Official stamps now available to collectors first came into private hands. |
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Provenance |
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From 1873 to 1884, Official stamps were supplied by the Continental and American Bank Note Companies to the stamp agent, who in turn distributed them to the various departments according to their specific requisitions. At no time were they ever made available for sale to the general public. Stamp collectors of the time might formally petition the departments for courtesy examples, and it is presumed that most stamps supplied this way were effectively demonetized by straight pen lines, tiny pen "x"s, or by use of a straight line overprint or receiving hand stamp struck as a sort of favor cancel. Intact sets of these with original gum still exist for some departments. In 1874, when the departments were canvassed as to how their Official stamps were distributed and whether Official stamps were ever enclosed for return postage, only the Interior, Justice, and Post Office Departments answered in the affirmative. This explains how a few unused Official stamps could have fallen into private hands, although most of them would have been prefixed to reply envelopes. In passing, I should note that by the term "unused" I encompass stamps both with and without gum, since only a tiny fraction of the uncanceled stamps that have survived were retrieved off envelopes that actually went through the mail. |
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In the beginning a few unused stamps may have slipped out by collectors importuning government officials who had access to the stamps. However, Resa Dubois' fascinating account of his Saturday schoolboy visits to the departmental offices in Washington, D.C.. makes it is clear that what was being sought and provided were large quantities of used stamps torn off incoming mail. It is possible that strict accounting of inventories was not maintained in the smaller offices and by the many individual officials who were furnished stamps since they were not valid for postage on private mail. Any attempt to use them so would have been fairly conspicuous on an envelope lacking the characteristic imprinted corner card. (While a number of such ambiguous usages have survived, and a few were even caught by sharp-eyed postal clerks, many of the others were probably legitimate usages where the official was temporarily at a loss for imprinted envelopes and neglected to add a hand-written "Official Business" identification.) |
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In 1877, a young and brazen Alvah Davidson sent President Grant an unused 6¢ postage stamp and received the 1¢, 2¢, and 3¢ Executive stamps in exchange along with a circular from the Post Office Department explaining that "specimen" stamps could be obtained in sets at face value. In 1875, a special printing of the Official stamps had been put on sale to the general public at the Office of the Third Postmaster General. The quantities in which these special printings were ordered clearly reflect the difficultly which collectors of the time had in obtaining certain of the regular Official stamps. Except for numerous sheets of the 1¢ and 2¢ values ordered by dealers for packet material, and exempting the Department of State dollar values (too rich for most collectors' budgets), the Departmental special printings were generally ordered and supplied in complete sets. Predictably, far more sets of the Executive special printings (3,461) were ordered than of any of the departments, and more Agriculture (354) and State (245) sets were ordered than of the "easier" departments: Justice (150), War (104), Navy (102), Post Office (81), Interior (75), and Treasury (72). Again predictably, a disproportionate number of the 7¢ values from Navy, State, Treasury, and War were also ordered, since the 7¢ Prussian closed mail rate was superseded by the General Postal Union rates of 1875, so the 7¢ stamps, when used at all, are almost always found in combination with other values to make up a 9¢ triple domestic rate, a 10¢ double U.P.U. rate, or a 10¢ domestic registry fee on a penalty envelope. Some youthful collectors, however, scorned the Official special printings. According to Col. Spencer Cosby: |
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"The specimen stamps were considered poor substitutes for the originals, besides being more expensive in most cases, and no one thought of collecting both. We even made fun of the beginner who would buy a set of specimen "Executives" because they cost only 22¢ while the originals were always good for a couple of dollars, and hard sometimes to get at that unless you were one of the favored few who knew the doorkeeper or messenger at the White House." |
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Penalty envelopes, first introduced in 1877 and gradually gaining widespread acceptance, eventually supplanted the use of Official stamps. Since unused copies of all the Official stamps have survived in quantity, it is obvious that none of the departments - despite their stated intentions - actually exhausted their supplies of stamps before converting over to penalty envelopes exclusively. In the transitional period, 1877-1884, Official stamps retained their postal validity but gradually became superfluous, and so the trickle of dispensations by officials sympathetic to collectors must have grown to a steady stream. Judging from an 1883 J.W. Scott auction containing large quantities of unused Official stamps, the philatelic commerce in these popular issues was surprisingly open and unabashed even during their period of postal validity. The preface to the catalogue extolled the investment potential of departmental stamps but disparaged the special printings: |
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"Special attention is called to the fact that all the unused department stamps offered, are originals, and not the worthless reprint " specimens," with which the country is flooded." |
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The preface also showed foreknowledge of the ultimate discontinuance of the Official stamps (" in 18-- (sic), they were discontinued, so that these stamps had a circulation of less than -- (sic) years.") well over a year in advance. |
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From the reports of the Postmaster General showing the statistics of the stamps delivered to the different departments over the years, it is clear that the annual requisitions for different values were carefully adjusted to meet anticipated demands, although for a few stamps the original requisitions of 1873 and 1874 had been wildly excessive (10¢, 12¢, 15¢, 24¢, 30¢ Agriculture; $5, $10, $20 State). There were a few departments where Official stamps were still heavily used in 1884: |
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Agriculture, Interior, Navy, and War. However, an Act of Congress which abolished the use of Official stamps and stamped envelopes was approved and made effective on the same day - July 5, 1884. 8 Thus their entire inventories of stamps for the upcoming year immediately became surplus. According to John Luff: |
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"The official stamps having become obsolete, it is said that the various departments were requested to return to the Post Office Department any unused stamps which they had on hand, and that some of the departments complied with this request while others declined, on the ground that they had paid for the stamps and should not be expected to give them up unless properly compensated." |
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No sources are given for this statement, but it sounds plausible. Many government officials, even at this early date, must have realized that the stamps in their possession still retained philatelic if not postal value. After all, this is the era when the remainders of many classic issues were starting to come onto the market. |
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Although precise records were kept when the large quantity of unissued Official stamps in the vaults of the American Bank Note Company were destroyed by burning in 1885, unfortunately no similar records were kept for whatever issued stamps had been dutifully returned to the Post Office Department. Without these records, the tables of annual requisitions recorded in Luff are insufficient to tell the complete story of the final quantities issued. The only department that with any certainty can be said to have complied with the directive is the Treasury Department, since none of the Treasury stamps on either hard or soft paper has ever been more common unused than used. Clearly the War Department never complied, as full sheets of the American soft paper printings were given out as souvenirs for years after, and a pad of forty sheets of the 2¢ value was still intact at the disposition of the Weill brothers' stock in 1990. |
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Between 1884 and 1886, hundreds of complete sets of unused Official stamps, including the Agriculture, Executive, Justice, and State series, were given away by accommodating government officials to enterprising schoolboy collectors who made the rounds of government offices on Saturdays. Demand was so persistent that complete sets were made up and prepackaged in small white envelopes, and the rarity of certain Official stamps in block form has since been attributed to this practice. Some collectors were able to exchange foreign stamps for the coveted Official stamps that had fallen into the possession of the messengers who worked in the offices. Judging from certain form letters that have survived, it appears that by late 1886 some departments were no longer able to supply collectors with unused examples of the discontinued stamps, even using the excuse that their supplies had been returned to the Post Office Department for destruction. Before the decade was out, dealers in Washington, D.C. were able to offer complete unused sets of all the departments, some priced at below face value. In 1889, C.F. Rothfuchs bought twenty-five intact sheets of the $10 and $20 State stamps, either directly or indirectly from the Department of State mail room. On another occasion, he bought five thousand unused State stamps, all values from 1¢ to 90¢, for an average price of 4¢ apiece. Thomas Semmes, of Semmes and Bastable, turned down one hundred complete sets of the Executive stamps in the form of blocks, offered to him at $1.00 per set, because his buying price at the time was 75¢ per set. At one point, though, he did have half sheets of fifty of the lower values. In 1895, an anonymous commentator noted that a set of Executive stamps was much scarcer used than unused. In 1915, 125 intact sheets of the 3¢ Post Office stamp were sold at auction for prices ranging from $1.50 to $3.75 apiece (face value being $3.00, catalogue value at the time $12.00). Clearly, then, the vast majority of unused Official stamps that have come down to us were salvaged from the departmental mail rooms in Washington, D.C. and were in fact remainders. |
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One might expect that whenever the American Bank Note Company was forced to reprint a value after the original Continental Bank Note Company printing on hard paper had been exhausted, the original hard paper printing would be quite scarce in unused condition. While this is certainly the case for the low value War Department stamps, it does not hold true for most of the others. Apparently, even if more stamps were requisitioned for the main office in Washington, D.C. the branch offices may still have had plenty of hard paper stamps on hand (or vice versa) and these too must have gotten out into the hands of collectors and dealers after 1884. As we have seen, the Official stamps gradually became superfluous during the transitional period, and then obsolete, retaining no postal validity whatsoever, and were ultimately remaindered, whereas the regular issue large Bank Note stamps, eventually replaced by the new issue of 1890, were still always vulnerable to being used up as postage, and the attrition on the high values must have been severe. It is safe to say that while the total quantity issued for each departmental value was less than its regular issue counterpart, a much higher percentage of Official stamps have survived in unused condition. |
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As to the survival rate for used Official stamps, it should roughly parallel the survival rate for regular issue large Bank Note stamps. However, as I have previously written: |
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"Departmental covers are much scarcer than regular issues because many of them went to other government offices where the cover might reside for awhile, docketed with its contents in a file, until the archives were purged. And mail of a personal nature was more likely to be saved for sentimental reasons than official mail addressed to private citizens." |
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Thus, after the initial point of reception, when stamps might be torn off covers by watchful clerks, the chances of used Official stamps surviving for discovery by a future generation of collectors decline precipitously. Those of us who collect cancellations on Official stamps are forever indebted to the intervention of such clerks as the kindly lady at the Agriculture Commission who skinned the 3¢ Agriculture stamps off the prestamped reply envelopes containing seed orders that came in from farmers all across the country. She furnished stamps to Rhesa DuBois, who at fifteen in 1874 haunted the halls of the great departmental offices in Washington, D.C. and later recalled that the going rate for canceled copies of the Agriculture, Interior, Navy, and Treasury stamps was 20¢ a hundred. C.F. Rothfuchs recalled having bought a lot over 500,000 used War Department stamps from a private party. The Seagrave Sale in 1883 included large quantities of the more common used stamps, including 50,000 copies of the 3¢ and 6¢ Treasury stamps. The pioneer dealer J.H. Houston, who sent out a postcard in 1889 advertising complete unused sets of Official stamps and had worked in four departments himself, once passed up an opportunity to buy a barrel full of Official stamps from a messenger. Of all the used Official stamps that have come down to us, many would be regarded now as uncollectible due to overly heavy obliterations or to damage suffered while being applied or "skinned" from their envelopes. |
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Survey of Experts |
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For the first test, the survey of collectors and dealers who specialize in Official stamps, I received responses from nine people, counting myself. The results ranged widely, understandably so since each individual had not recently completed the exercise of assembling high quality used and unused sets of Departmentals, one by one. One expert cited only ten stamps as being definitely rarer used than unused, while another cited sixty-three stamps. I have tabulated the number of experts who believe a given stamp is rarer used than unused, and have concluded that a majority of five positive votes qualifies for confirmation. This test proved to be the most rigorous of the three and suggests that even among a hand-picked panel of experts the consciousness of how many Official stamps are scarcer used than unused is just beginning to dawn. |
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Inventory of Dealer's Stocks |
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For the second test, the inventory of dealers' stocks, the statistical validity of the results depends on having a large enough sampling to balance out the vagaries of inconsistent supply, for at any given time one dealer may be stocking up in anticipation of increased demand while another's stock may have been depleted by the same demand. For the more expensive stamps that most dealers cannot afford to stock in quantity, better results might have been achieved by surveying auction catalogues. Of course, I have left out the many dealers who stock exclusively unused material so as not to skew the results. The tabulated results represent the combined total of stamps inventoried from eight mail-order and bourse dealers, all of whom make a conscientious effort to stock these issues. The survey was broad enough to turn up at least one unused copy of every value except for the $20 State (single copies only of the $5 State and 6¢ Justice soft); however, on the used side, no copies were found of the 2¢ and 6¢ Executive, the 90¢, $10 and $20 State, and the 1¢, 6¢, 10¢, 12¢, and 24¢ Interior soft, and only single copies of the 1¢, 10¢, 12¢, 24¢ and 30¢ Agriculture, 2¢, 10¢, 30¢, and 90¢ Justice, $5 State, 15¢ Interior soft, 3¢ and 6¢ Justice soft, and 30¢ War soft. In terms of the issues that were not available, there is a striking correspondence between these results and an advertisement placed by Stanley Gibbons in 1931 (see Figure 1). The number of different Official stamps determined by this test to be scarcer used than unused, 82, coincides closely with the results of the third test. |
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Historical Analysis of Catalogue Values |
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The majority of general collectors of classic United States stamps, both here and abroad, have always bought used stamps, primarily because of cost. But in the early years, the Official stamps presented a special case because of the widespread availability of unused material. In the 1880's and 1890's, the Departmentals were the most popular stamps in the entire catalogue, partly because this long series included more face different stamps than had ever been issued in total for regular postage between 1847 and 1873 in this country. A boom in auction realizations - $40.00 for a 90¢ Justice, $200.00 for a $5 State - caused a corresponding rise in catalogue values. Collectors of the time were less concerned with centering and more concerned with matching color shades within a department. This is understandable since then, unlike now, the stamps were typically offered by dealers in complete sets, with the distinctive shades of the Continental and American printings mixed together, and early editions of the Scott catalogue priced them accordingly. In the 1900 edition, a complete set of unused Official stamps commanded only a 15% premium over a used set. Who wouldn't have been tempted to pay the premium, especially considering how much easier it would have been to obtain fresh unused copies? For many years, the premium for a set of unused stamps remained fairly insignificant: by 1970, it was only up to 44%. |
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Counterbalancing the naive enthusiasm of the general collector for unused stamps, there must always have been a dedicated corps of purists who looked askance at the remaindered unused stamps and held out for postally used copies. In 1922, the resonantly named Eustace B. Power, owner of Stanley Gibbons, Inc. in New York delivered the following wishful pronouncement: |
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"I predict that within the next ten years over 50% of the departments will be priced higher used than unused since there is no doubt they are infinitely rarer thus and in addition to this at least half the used copies around are more worthy of the waste paper basket than the album leaf so villainous is the cancellation." |
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In 1937, Harry M. Konwiser was maddeningly noncommittal in responding to the question: "Do you regard canceled Department stamps more desirable than unused stamps?" Possibly, the taint of their quasi-remainder status had some effect in suppressing the popularity of the Official stamps over the years. However, it is more likely that the gradual displacement backwards in catalogues and albums over time contributed more to their fall from grace. The 1¢ Agriculture stamp, originally Scott No. 500, directly followed the regular issues until the Parcel Post stamps of 1912-1913 intervened: it became Scott No. 1500 in l920, and Scott No. O1 in l940. In 1937, J.M. Bartels reported increased interest in the Official stamps, but other writers scoffed that they had never been popular. By the time they were rediscovered, along with the rest of the back-of-the-book material, in the 1970's and 1980's, investor preference for pristine mint stamps was driving the premium for unused material skyward, and whatever stigma attached to these remaindered stamps was all but forgotten. The upwards surge for mint stamps is typified by the 2¢ Interior on hard paper, which as late as 1974 catalogued the same used and unused: by 1995 it had risen to $17.50 unused, but only $2.00 used. |
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To show the widening disparity in catalogue pricing for used and unused Official $40.00 for a 90¢ Justice, $200.00 for a $5 State - caused a corresponding rise in catalogue values. Collectors of the time were less concerned with centering and more concerned with matching color shades within a department. This is understandable since then, unlike now, the stamps were typically offered by dealers in complete sets, with the distinctive shades of the Continental and American printings mixed together, and early editions of the Scott catalogue priced them accordingly. In the 1900 edition, a complete set of unused Official stamps commanded only a 15% premium over a used set. Who wouldn't have been tempted to pay the premium, especially considering how much easier it would have been to obtain fresh unused copies? For many years, the premium for a set of unused stamps remained fairly insignificant: by 1970, it was only up to 44%. |
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Counterbalancing the naive enthusiasm of the general collector for unused stamps, there must always have been a dedicated corps of purists who looked askance at the remaindered unused stamps and held out for postally used copies. In 1922, the resonantly named Eustace B. Power, owner of Stanley Gibbons, Inc. in New York delivered the following wishful pronouncement: |
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"I predict that within the next ten years over 50% of the departments will be priced higher used than unused since there is no doubt they are infinitely rarer thus and in addition to this at least half the used copies around are more worthy of the waste paper basket than the album leaf so villainous is the cancellation." |
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In 1937, Harry M. Konwiser was maddeningly noncommittal in responding to the question: "Do you regard canceled Department stamps more desirable than unused stamps?" Possibly, the taint of their quasi-remainder status had some effect in suppressing the popularity of the Official stamps over the years. However, it is more likely that the gradual displacement backwards in catalogues and albums over time contributed more to their fall from grace. The 1¢ Agriculture stamp, originally Scott No. 500, directly followed the regular issues until the Parcel Post stamps of 1912-1913 intervened: it became Scott No. 1500 in l920, and Scott No. O1 in l940. In 1937, J.M. Bartels reported increased interest in the Official stamps, but other writers scoffed that they had never been popular. By the time they were rediscovered, along with the rest of the back-of-the-book material, in the 1970's and 1980's, investor preference for pristine mint stamps was driving the premium for unused material skyward, and whatever stigma attached to these remaindered stamps was all but forgotten. The upwards surge for mint stamps is typified by the 2¢ Interior on hard paper, which as late as 1974 catalogued the same used and unused: by 1995 it had risen to $17.50 unused, but only $2.00 used. |
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To show the widening disparity in catalogue pricing for used and unused Official stamps, I have charted the total Scott catalogue value for a complete set at five year intervals between 1900 and 1995. The Official stamps were not priced individually in unused condition until 1884, and the printings of the Continental and American Bank Note Companies were not differentiated until 1897. The totals include 115 different stamps and exclude only the 1¢ Agriculture on soft paper and the 24¢ Interior on soft paper, neither having ever been priced used. Of course, I have also excluded the various intermediate paper printings once attributed to the American Bank Note Company that have since been dropped from the catalogue. (See Figure 2.) |
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The results of my historical analysis of the Scott catalogue indicate that between 1885 and the present, 86 of the 117 different Official stamps have at one time or another catalogued the same in used or unused condition. In 1930, 54 stamps were at a par, and even as late as 1970, 21 different stamps were still holding their own in used condition. Between 1925 and 1934, the 10¢ and 30¢ War on soft paper were so scarce used as to be unpriceable, and for years after used copies commanded a substantial premium. Conversely, some of the remaindered soft paper issues were so plentiful unused as to be catalogued below face value: in 1900, the 30¢ War catalogued a heart-breaking 20¢! |
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It is safe to assume that whenever the valuations for used and unused copies are equal, the stamp is actually scarcer used. Regardless of scarcity, the editors of the catalogue have always been reluctant to price used copies higher than unused for fear of encouraging fraudulent cancellations. The phenomenon that holds in certain classic European collecting fields, such as Heligoland and Roman States, where the remaindered stamps were so prevalent as to be virtually worthless, whereas the few genuinely used commanded a substantial premium, seldom occurs in United States philately, so there has been little call to develop experts adept at distinguishing genuine strikes of nondescript cut-cork obliterators. The records of the Philatelic Foundation show a bewildering number of relatively common unused Official stamps having been submitted for expertization over the past ten years, but very few used stamps, and these chiefly for verification of fancy cancellations. One of the fringe benefits of the recent inflation in unused catalogue values is that there is now little incentive for unscrupulous individuals to fake cancellations. But if a major pricing correction were to occur, the languishing overstocks of Officials without gum could become prime targets for the dangerously deceptive photocopied "cancellations" now turning up on dollar value Columbians. Some experts fear that this has already begun to happen in a small way, witnessed by the occasional high value Agriculture stamp that surfaces with an improbably delicate bit of circular date stamp or three-ring target on a lower corner. In general, the collector of used Official stamps now needs to be alert chiefly for false obliterations applied over the "SPECIMEN" overprint on the 1¢ and 2¢ special printings or over the "FACSIMILE" overprint on the German reproductions of the State dollar values, both of which are easily detectable. |
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Recent Pricing Trends |
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When I began this research in early 1993, I was disturbed by the fact that only twenty-eight used Official stamps had reached a new peak in the 1993 edition of the Scott catalogue, whereas sixty-four numbers had fallen back since having reached their highest valuation some time between 1982 and 1989. I am happy to report that in the latest edition, 1995, this alarming slide has been partially reversed: fully sixty-two issues have increased in value since 1993 (although only thirty-six issues have reached new highs), while only one, the 24¢ Treasury, continues to decline. Some of the changes have been dramatic: the 1¢ and 2¢ Justice stamps used have both doubled in value in the span of two years, while all the valuations for unused Official stamps have remained static. |
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This encouraging trend supports the anecdotal evidence gathered from dealers reporting consistent strong demand for good used Official stamps. Invariably, the stamps that have not increased in value are the more common issues, cataloging less than $10.00 apiece, suggesting that the market for used Official stamps, while strong, is not particularly deep, and that the supply of the more common stamps is more than adequate for the limited demand. The parameters of this limited demand can be gauged by comparing the 90¢ Continental Bank Note Company regular issue of 1873 (185,000 issued, valued at $l85.00 used in 1995) with the 90¢ Interior (64,377 issued, $15.00 used), the 90¢ Post Office (65,200 issued, $7.50 used), and the 90¢ War (48,172 issued, $10.00 used): all three Official stamps are much scarcer yet are valued at far less. The 6¢ Interior stamp on soft paper, of which not a single used copy turned up in the inventory of dealers' stocks, in 1995 is valued at a paltry $2.50. |
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In light of this comparison, it is hard to conceive of a time when the demand for Official stamps was so intense that speculators attempted to corner the market on certain issues, yet this successfully accomplished on the 1¢ State at the turn of the century, halfheartedly attempted by Eustace B. Power in his "early career as a stamp pirate" on the 7¢ War, and unsuccessfully attempted on the Agriculture stamps. |
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What seems to have happened in recent years is that as the Official stamps, limping gamely behind the rest of the back-of-the-back, came out into the light and attracted the attention of general U.S. collectors, inevitably the prevailing taste of a generation of collectors for mint material drove prices upwards to a level where many stamps warranted being lotted individually in auction catalogues and their progress could be easily tracked. Meanwhile, the commerce in good used stamps continued unabated, but at such a humble level and in such an episodic way as to escape notice. Perversely, the widening disparity in catalogue prices, rather than describing an actual trend, influenced the market to behave in exactly the opposite way: demand for used material rose because prices were artificially low, while demand for unused material slackened, because prices were artificially high. |
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Conclusion |
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The conclusions of my research are presented in the following table. In order to be classified as scarcer used than unused in the final column, it was necessary for each issue to pass two of the three tests. 41 issues passed the survey of experts test; 82 issues passed the dealers' inventory test; 86 issues passed the historical catalogue analysis test. In the end, 73 out of 117 issues were classified as scarcer used than unused. 57 of the 73 have had their used valuations in the catalogue increased between 1993 and 1995: those that didn't were generally the cheaper stamps for which the existing supply exceeds the limited demand. Those stamps which are incontestably much scarcer used than unused are the following: 10¢, 12¢, 15¢, 24¢, 30¢ Agriculture; 10¢ Executive; $5, $10, $20 State; 1¢, 6¢, 10¢, 12¢, 15¢, 24¢ Interior on soft paper; 10¢, 30¢ War on soft paper. The ne plus ultra of used Official stamps is the lone authenticated copy of the 24¢ Interior on soft paper.33 Next in order of scarcity would be the $20 and $10 State (which may have been in postal use for a very short period of time),34 and the $5 State. Then would have to come - but not necessarily in this order - the four soft paper Interior values (1¢, 10¢, 12¢, and 15¢) whose scarcity in used condition is much under appreciated. While some collectors may disagree with the results of this survey for certain individual stamps, it is nevertheless clear that a majority of the United States Official stamps are scarcer used than unused. |
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Acknowledgments: My thanks to Rollin C. Huggins, Lester C. Lanphear, and especially Robert L. Markovits for bringing to my attention many of the more obscure citations. They, along with Albert Chang, Larry Joseph, Carl Mainberger, Alfred E. Staubus, and Dr. Dennis Schmidt were kind enough enough to participate in the survey of experts. I am also indebted to Rollin C. Huggins, Jr., the dean of writers on Official stamps, for reviewing an earlier draft of this article. |
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e-mail: alan campbell |
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copyright © 2000-04 fran adams |
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