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Revenue Stamps

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Daniel View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Revenue Stamps
    Posted: 20 June 2010 at 05:08
I thought I would revive and expand my post from the previous forum.
 
Stamp duty was introduced in England in 1694 during the reign of William And Mary for the purpose of funding costly wars. Specifically, the Stamp Act was introduced as 'An Act for granting to their Majesties several duties upon vellum, parchment and paper, for four years, towards carrying on the war against France'. The Stamp Office was established to collect the six rates of duty; 1d, 6d, 1shilling, 2s6d, 5s and 40shillings which would be applied to various legal and financial documents by embossing. Each embossed stamp was a different shape to prevent any possibility of fraud by simply altering the value.
 
Here is a scan of a few such revenues from my small collection:
 
 
The bottom right example shows a triple of the common 6d value used for affidavits, writs, leases, passports and marine charters. The triple example indicates two additional duty increases and was therefore used between 1714 and 1757.
 
The top right example dates from 1783 and represents six duty increases, the duty now totalling 6shillings (you have to add up all of the values embossed on the stamp to get the total value; VI PENCE VI PENCE VI PENCE 1 SHILLIG around the top of the stamp and 1 SHILLG VI PENCE 1 SHILLING at the bottom).
 
Documents were also produced on vellum and parchment which are animal skins and did not take to being embossed. Therefore, another method was required to attach embossed duty stamps, this method was called escutcheoning. It consisted of a using a separate piece of paper, called the escutcheon, and affixing it to the vellum or parchment document with an adhesive  and then embossing the escutcheon. But it was soon discovered that this escutcheon could be easily removed and re-used for fraudulent purposes. Therefore, a new method was required and this consisted of using an additional metal strip (used like a wide staple) to affix the escutcheon by making two slits through the escutcheon and document and the metal strip applied like a staple with the ends folded back behind the document. The escutcheon and metal strip are then embossed and a label applied on the back of the document over the ends of the metal strip as a further security device. The label bearing the Royal Cypher of the reigning monarch and are hence known as cypher labels. These are sometimes called the forerunners of the printed postage stamp. An example of an escutcheon type stamp can be seen in the top left and a cyher label can be seen next to it.
 
I'll post again later on this subject.
 
 


Edited by Daniel - 20 June 2010 at 05:12
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Daniel View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 September 2010 at 08:50
Here are a couple of headers from insurance documents that are doubly attractive for the revenues and the steel engraved logo illustrations:
 
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 September 2010 at 09:09
I must scan and post up a few of my doucments
Those are nice.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 September 2010 at 10:33
I like to see Revenues used in context, still attached to the documentation. Here's a scan from a 1930s UK passport with 8/- worth of revenues.
The inside cover also has a 6d orange embossed

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Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 September 2010 at 12:01
A couple more documents picked at random, showing both a US revenue stamp and a good old 1881 1d lilac used a revenue stamp on a self explantory receipt.


And what I believe to be a page from a Japanese health or pension scheme stamp book.

A nice British example of one of these, ideally with different valued stamps, is on my shopping list.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31 March 2011 at 08:51
As part of a small job lot of German war Cinderellas I came across these two items:
 
 
At first they were a mystery to me but they seemed to show a military badge of some type. Quite by chance while looking through a book on D-Day I discovered that it is the insignia for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) which was headed by General (later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower and was responsible for the D-Day invasion and emancipation of Europe through to the end of the Second World War. Here is the full colour version of the badge:
 
 
The flaming sword represents avenging Allied forces; the black, the darkness of Nazism; and the rainbow, the liberty to come.
 
This then left the question of exactly what they were. It was tempting to think that they were some sort of postage stamp but after a Google search I found a stamp company selling some. It turns out that they were used as military travel permit revenues. I couldn't find them in any of my catalogues, not even Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps & Covers but the stamp company that does have them, Rigastamps in the US, shows Yvert & Tellier (French) catalogue numbers and Bush-Cash (I have never heard of them) catalogue numbers. The one marked GRATIS is clearly used when no fee is required. The other stamp is denominated $1 and is overprinted in German Marks, the Rigastamps site shows 2 other versions of this overprinted stamp. I wonder if there were any other basic stamps, does anyone know anything else about them?
 
Here is the link to Rigastamps, they seem to carry a decent  amount of Cinderella material:
 
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Post Options Post Options   Quote marcadabollo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 September 2011 at 03:58
Originally posted by Daniel Daniel wrote:

As part of a small job lot of German war Cinderellas I came across these two items:
 
 
 

 
.............
This then left the question of exactly what they were. It was tempting to think that they were some sort of postage stamp but after a Google search I found a stamp company selling some. It turns out that they were used as military travel permit revenues. I couldn't find them in any of my catalogues, not even Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps & Covers but the stamp company that does have them, Rigastamps in the US, shows Yvert & Tellier (French) catalogue numbers and Bush-Cash (I have never heard of them) catalogue numbers. The one marked GRATIS is clearly used when no fee is required. The other stamp is denominated $1 and is overprinted in German Marks, the Rigastamps site shows 2 other versions of this overprinted stamp. I wonder if there were any other basic stamps, does anyone know anything else about them?

Daniel,
these stamps are almost always described as "military travel permit stamps" but this is a reductive definition. Actually they had the same function of consular stamps but in a period when Germany was under Allied Military Governement so had no authority to issue consular stamps or passports.

Here an example of  use of a 4 DM stamp on an Austrian passport in 1952, paying the fee for a visa to Germany (issued by a representative of the military authority controlling Germany, hence the given definition)



But the fact that these stamps had the a more broad usage than allowing travel to Germany is clearly shown by this rather battered passport issued to a German citizen in Paraguay: as said, Germany under the Allied control was not allowed to issue passports therefore Germans received a "Temporary Travel Document in lieu of passport": in this case the American consul in Asuncion, in Paraguay, acted on behalf of the Allied High Commisison for Germany for issuing a permit valid for Paraguay and Argentina to a "farmer" living at the "Hotel Germania" in Asuncion and willing to move to Argentina.



The fee for the issue of the travel document was paid with two stamps denominated in US $



I have other examples of AMG stamps on passports, but I cannot retrieve them very quickly.

The Bush-Cass catalogue mentioned in the reference you have found is a catalogue of AMG revenue stamps, so the inclusion of these stamps is perfectly right, although no notice is given of the fact that the AMG used them only in connection to Germany and not, just to mention another AMG controlled area, for travel to Trieste. Less clear is the reason why the Yvert catalogue of French revenues lists them: may be just because France was part of the Allied countries controlling Germany.

As soon as I will retrieve other passports out of my GM (general mess), I'll post more pictures.
Michele
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 September 2011 at 08:01
I brief reply, but those documents above are an excellent example of how revenue stamps etc can be so much more informative than ordinary stamps and tell a story
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Post Options Post Options   Quote marcadabollo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 September 2011 at 08:29
Steve, I would not dismiss so drastically the postage stamps which, when on letters, also may tell stories but certainly I agree with you that very often revenues are very intruguing. I started collecting passports because of the rvenues they carry, but ended up with more than 600 of them just because you can read from them pieces of life, and not always a happy one.
Michele

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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 September 2011 at 12:02
Hello Michele (marcadabollo) and Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your reply, that's one of the great things about a growing forum, there's a good chance that eventually someone will be able to answer an outstanding question. Those passports look great with examples of the military travel permit stamps inside. I agree with Steve that revenues can tell a story when still attached to their original documents and it is a shame that, in general terms, most have been cut out. I've had a look at complete passports but most seem quite expensive but I might try some of the cheaper ones. I noticed on eBay a catalogue of AMG Revenues but coming from the USA, with postage, it was about £28.
Thanks again,
Daniel
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