National Philatelic Exhibitions

of Washington, D.C., Inc.

 

 

 

Last Update 3/21/03
PLAYING CARD REVENUES
The first attempt to tax American Playing Cards by the British in 1765 met such resistance it became a major cause of the Revolutionary War. Tax stamps were prepared but none were ever used The dies and proofs for these embossed stamps reside now in the British Library.

In 1862 the United States Congress passed its first tax on Playing Cards to help pay the cost of the Civil War. Adhesive stamps titled “USIR PLAYING CARDS” were made. With this beginning the U.S. printed playing card tax stamps for 100 years. The study of these stamps can be organized into four groups.

1. THE ISSUE OF 1862, was printed in five denominations, the three cents being the scarest. Frame one shows all these stamps including rhe elusive rhree cents imperforate.
Illustration
British Tax Stamp

2. THE PRIVATE DIES, offers a wide variety of designs. Manufacturers were allowed to submit their own design to be used by them exclusively. The famous Caterson, Bratz & Co. stamp is in this group. It in shown in frame two, page 7.

3. THE BUREAU ISSUES, begins with a two cents stamp in 1894. Original sketches are shown in frame three. Rate changes and their resulting issues are examined in frames five to eight.

4. BUREAU PRECANCELLED COIL STAMPS “playing cards” are the only revenues to be precancelled by the Bureau. This groupis shown complete in frame nine.

Playing cards stamps were used in a way that most were destroyed when opening the package. Survivors usually are creased where they mere folded over the edge of the pack.

Cancellations are important to understand playing card revenues, they tell us when and whoused the stamps. Several cancellation studies are featured throughout this exhibit.

Selected Highlights
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Ace of spades commemorating General Lafayette’s visit to America by Jazaniah Ford, America’s first playing card manufacturer.

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