Talk:1869 Pictorial Issue

A second competitor
The section "A second competitor", about competitor stamps supposedly proposed by the Continental Bank Note Company -- looks fake. Those stamps are more modern than anything from that time (not just US but world wide), and the two of the supposed topics on the three stamps, "Monroe Doctrine" and "Emancipation Proclamation" would not have been actual lead topics at the time the stamps were supposedly designed (1869); rather, they are what modern people would guess stamps circa 1869 would be focused on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.226.159 (talk) 03:51, 20 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I can't comment on this but perhaps we can determine if the source is reliable or has been discredited in the intervening 70 years or are there other sources that don't just propagate what the 1941 source claimed. ww2censor (talk) 06:34, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

The 1941 book does indeed exist, but is out-of-print and hard to find (http://www.amazon.com/Essays-U-S-adhesive-postage-stamps/dp/0880000813). If this section is a fake, as I suspect, I'm not questioning the book, rather, I wonder if someone is making something up and then falsely attributing it to that book. (Then again, why would someone bother for such a minor Wikipedia article?) The Continental Bank Note Company *did* make stamps for the US, a few years later in the 1870's, but as you can see from the slide show here: http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&tid=2033474, they look nothing like those proposed three stamps. Further doubtful is that the revered Lincoln would be placed at the bottom of a quasi-psychedelic number 3 (as well as the atomic symbolism on that issue which would be unknown at that time) -- even in 2013 that would create an uproar. Also questionable is the assertion "First, in a rebuke to the Pictorials, each stamp featured a sculptural portrait, as postal tradition had dictated." But it seems the majority of U.S. stamps earlier to that date were *not* sculptural but paintings, as this article shows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_history_of_the_United_States. All in all, this supposed series does not look like work that would be done by a competitor company trying to win over the US government in 1869. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.232.188 (talk) 13:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

These essays were, indeed, listed in the 1941 Brazer book, and, in fact, examples of them all three were offered in stamp auctions (Robert Siegel and Matthew Bennett) in 2012. To be sure, the essays were only printed in black; had they ever been used to produce postage stamps, colors would have been chosen for them. Nor, apparently, does the Monroe image conjecturally inserted into the black oval of the original essay seem to date from as early as 1869. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.111.169 (talk) 14:47, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

The section on "A Second Competitor" needs some serious editing and revision, but the questions raised here about the authenticity of such essays require some comment. Continental Bank Note Co. large numeral die essays do exist and were indeed illustrated and listed in the Brazer catalog of 1941, as well as the Quarterman reprint in 1977, the Historical Catalog update series in the Essay-Proof Journal up to 1991, and since 1991 are listed in the "Essays" section of the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers. Knowledge of their existence preceded Brazer, inasmuch as an incomplete listing of some of the denominations and designs appear in the essay catalog by Edward Mason in 1912. Two series of these essays were prepared: one series consisting of numerals for the 1,2,3, and 6 cent denominations in various colors, and a second consisting of various 3 cent numeral designs only in black or green. There are a few surviving examples of the first series still on full-sized die-sunk cardstock bearing a handstamp imprint of the CBNCo dated December 30, 1869.

The examples in the photograph are a shameful embarrassment, inasmuch as they misrepresent the colors of the actual essays, and in the case of the 6c bear a spurious portrait of James Monroe that was never part of the series. That last is a fantasy item if it exists in hardcopy at all. The designs for these essays are derived from some tax paid revenue stamps Continental introduced in 1868 for Manufactured Tobacco and Snuff. I propose to replace the falsified present image with a composite of all four first series designs parallel to their tax paid revenue counterparts. The images are available to me, but I do not know the procedure to follow for posting them. I am also prepared to rewrite the section with more authoritative information. Again, not sure of the procedure to follow. Stejovis (talk) 05:07, 25 June 2014 (UTC) Stejovis

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