Let’s hope that the title of this article is true and will remain true. Some might stop reading right now, but let me offer that I sincerely hope that my title remains true, for my enjoyment of philately is based on this.
Perhaps we should back up and explore how I, and probably most of my readers, began collecting stamps. Someone gave me a preprinted album and immediately the quest to fill all the squares and rectangles in the album began. What joy I felt when all the spaces on a single page were filled. But then someone gave me a stamp for which I could not find a space in my album, so I placed it on one of the blank or stock pages at the back of my album. And so I became interested in the back of the book.
But now I needed to learn about those stamps at the back of my album. And so began my search for catalogs that would identify and allow me to organize those stamps placed at the back of my album. Fifty years ago, I acquired my first state revenue catalog, authored by Elbert Hubbard (1960) and that set me to organizing and mounting my state revenue stamps. Much of my early examples of state revenues were from Pennsylvania, the state where I grew up and lived through my first five decades.
One of the peculiarities of Hubbard’s Pennsylvania listings was two beer stamps with catalog numbers B 1/2 and B 3/4, beer labels with a provisional beer tax statement. I found the catalog numbers rather peculiar – until I was given a copy of George Cabot’s 1940 A Priced Catalog of the State and City Revenue and Tax Stamps of the United States. Hubbard had used Cabot’s early numbering system and when he discovered the two provisionals that Cabot had not cataloged, he simply appended them before B1 and gave them the fractional numbers. That made perfect sense. What a thrill it was when I acquired Hubbard’s Pennsylvania B 1/2 (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Beer bottle neck label with Pennsylvania provisional tax paid inscription, in use from May 5 -14, 1933 (Hubbard PA B 1/2).
Figure 2. Daeufers Peerless Beer bottle label with Pennsylvania provisional tax paid inscription.
And it was even a greater thrill when I found some more Pennsylvania beer provisionals (Figure 2) from the period of May 5 - 14, 1933, when the state was unable to supply the breweries with stamps because the legislature made the tax effective only one day after the act’s passage! In the current Wrisley (2013) The State Revenue Catalog these beer labels with provisional tax paid statements have been separated from the state-issued tax stamps. There are 29 listed major varieties! Of those I have managed to find only 19. But as I sit down to write, an unlisted label with the provisional beer tax statement has arrived in my mailbox (Figure 3)!
Figure 3. Newly discovered Stegmaiers Select beer bottle label with Pennsylvania provisional tax paid inscription.
In the early 1970s, Ken Pruess, the editor of The State Revenue Newsletter, led an effort to publish updates to the Hubbard catalog and encouraged the development of specialized catalogs of individual states. The result was specialized catalogs of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Washington. That effort later led to the publication of catalogs of the New England States, North Carolina, and Utah. One should also note the publication of a catalog of non-pictorial hunting and fishing stamps. All of these remain definitive sources of information.
In 2007, the State Revenue Society published a comprehensive state revenue catalog edited by Scott Troutman. The limitations of this catalog led the State Revenue Society to aggressively seek the input of its membership to improve the listings, under the capable leadership of David Wrisley. That effort produced an upsurge in the collecting of state revenues and this has led to a slow, but steady, discovery of items such as the one described earlier.
Lest you think that the only changes in the catalog listings are additions, you should recognize that some of the listings in earlier catalogs were either erroneously described or thought to be logical stamps that should exist. Among the beer stamps of Pennsylvania that Hubbard listed was a set of three stamps that were described as issued in 1933: a half pint, a one pint, and a one pint reciprocal tax stamp (Hubbard B25, 26, and 27). Based on the research of several collectors, the record has now been corrected.
So what is true? We are quite aware that a permanent design for a pint stamp came into use in 1933, with the earliest recorded date on July 14, 1933 (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Earliest reported use of a permanent design pint stamp for Pennsylvania beverage tax.
Figure 5. The 1937 Pennsylvania reciprocal beverage (beer) tax stamp.
The pint reciprocal tax stamp is also well known (Figure 5), but the enabling legislation for this stamp was not enacted until 1937. The story behind the legislation was that Delaware had a higher tax on beer than Pennsylvania. Apparently, the Pennsylvania brewers lobbied the legislature to pass a reciprocal tax on any beer imported into Pennsylvania from a state with the higher beer tax. Thus, beer coming from Delaware into Pennsylvania was to be taxed at the higher Delaware rate. There is much more to the story, as Delaware eventually enacted a reciprocal tax on Pennsylvania beer being sold in Delaware. It has been reported that both of these laws were struck down by the courts.
Which brings us to the half pint stamp, which I have never seen, nor has any other state revenue stamp collector with whom I have corresponded. Since the Pennsylvania beer tax rates are based on the barrel when sold by the keg or on a pint or less when bottled, there is no necessity for a different denomination for a half pint beer stamp. Yet, even that is not quite the end of the story of why this half pint deserved to be delisted. One of the researchers mentioned above searched records in Harrisburg and found a stamp that is not known in collector hands, a half-barrel reciprocal beer tax stamp. That stamp is a logical candidate for what Hubbard listed as a half pint beer tax stamp.
The thrill of finding uncataloged state revenue stamps is what initially attracted me to collecting these stamps, a thrill that continues to this day. Even showing that a listed variety cannot logically exist and should be delisted also gives me a thrill. And so we end where we began, with the hope that our catalogs will remain incomplete.
Selected Bibliography
General State Revenue Catalogs
Cabot, G. D. A Priced Catalog of the State and City Revenue and Tax stamps of the United States (Weehawken, New Jersey: G.D. Cabot, 1940).
Hubbard, E. S. A. State Revenue Catalog (Portland, ME: Severn-Wylie-Jewett, 1960).
Troutman, S. The SRS State Revenue Stamps Catalog (Lincroft, New Jersey: The State Revenue Society, 2007).
Wrisley, D. The State Revenue Catalog (Lincroft, New Jersey: The State Revenue Society, 2013).
Specialized State Revenue Catalogs
Applegate, F. L. et al. Pennsylvania Local Real Estate Transfer Stamps (Lincoln, NE: The State Revenue Society, 1969).
Bellinghausen, C. J. Kansas Revenue Stamps (Lincoln, NE: State Revenue Society, 1972).
Conley, R. Pennsylvania Local Deed Tax stamps Catalog (Lincroft, NJ: The State Revenue Society, 2015).
Hines, T. The Revenue Stamps of the New England States (Thornwood, NY: State Revenue Society, 1984).
Matesen, M. E. Washington State Cities Revenue Catalog (Lincroft, NJ: The State Revenue Society, 1973).
Matesen, M. E. Catalog of Revenue Stamps of the State of Utah (Lynnwood, WA: Mack E. Matesen, 2003).
Pruess, K. P. Nebraska Revenue Stamps (Lincoln, NE: The State Revenue Society, 1972).
Pruess, K. P. Colorado Revenue Stamps (Lincoln, NE: The State Revenue Society, 2007).
Troutman, S. The Revenue stamps of North Carolina, Including Tax Tags and Related Items (Duncansville, PA: Scott Troutman, 2005).