Sales Control Stamp Booklets
[This article was originally published in Linn's Stamp News, July 2005.]
In the summer of 1890, 17 year old Robert M. Miller founded the Sons of Philatelia (S of P). He wanted to establish a philatelic society that was affordable to collectors. With dues of $.25, compared to the $2.50 annual dues of the American Philatelic Association (APA), the S of P was off to a good start. By October of 1893 it was adding members at almost 3 times the rate of the APA. The $2.50 APA dues in 1890 is equivalent to $48.84 in 2003 dollars per www.westegg.com/inflation/.
S of P members could sell stamps to other members by mounting their stamps in a circuit sales book and then sending it to the S of P Sales Department for circulation to other members of the society. The procedures of the S of P Sales Department were described in an article by Charles E. Shaw for The American Collector in November 1897. The S of P issued control stamps shown in Figure 1. They were issued in booklets of 100 stamps and sold for $.10.
Figure 1 Sons of Philatelia Sales Control Stamps
When a collector removed a collectible stamp from the circuit sales book, the collector was supposed to replace it with a control stamp which contained the collector’s number. The Superintendent of Sales would then be able to tally the amount due the society. Some members neglected to place their control stamps in the spaces after the collectible stamps were removed. When a member received a circuit book with blank spaces, he or she was supposed to notify the previous collector and also to send word to the superintendent. The American Collector article doesn’t say what information was to be provided but only that “Such vacancies should be adjusted while they are fresh in mind.”
The Sons of Philatelia had a stormy and short existence. Edmund B. Thomas Jr. reported on the tribulations of the organization in an article in the December 1995 issue of the American Philatelist. Thomas wrote that, in 1904, it was “…reported that A. Platz, the sales superintendent of the Sons of Philatelia since 1899, had left for California with some $3,000 worth of stamps…” Other financial problems, such as non-payment of dues, harassed the organization.
Figure 2 Telegraph booklet pane of prepaid stamps
Telegraph companies issued sales control booklets of stamps as early as 1862 in Great Britain and 1870 in the United States. Such U. S. companies included the California State Telegraph Co., Postal Telegraph – Cable Co., Western Union Telegraph Co., and several others. The telegraph stamp booklet pane in Figure 2 shows stamps that were attached to telegrams to show that customers had paid for them before they were sent. Stamps were also used to provide free franking privileges to executives of a telegraph company and executives of companies that used their telegraph services heavily. Telegraph stamps differ from the Sons of Philatelia control stamps in that they are listed in the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps & Covers whereas the S of P stamps are not. The S of P stamps and the various telegraph stamps are similar since both were issued by private companies in booklet form, predate the issuance of postage stamp booklets, and put some order and control into each company’s sales.
