Postage Stamp Chat Board & Stamp Bulletin Board Forum
 

I say Yes in my book on the topic (see here), and at least Dingle Smith agreed in his review in the recent issue of The Asia Pacific Exhibitor.

Being issued to show the payment of a copyright royalty imposed by an Act of Parliament, which included the stipulation for the use of stamps means they came under the originating authority of a government, even if the proceeds explicitly were not for the Government's use. This makes them Revenues per FIP criteria.

Why is this important for Australia?

Well, while only 38 Australian companies issued the stamps out of the 220-odd issuers known so far (the rest being mainly GB and European countries), some of those local issuers were particularly prolific. The most commonly sighted on 78rpm records and pianola rolls locally are J. Albert & Son, Allan & Co, D. Davis & Co, Chappell & Co Sydney and Palings. Between just these 5, they account for 27 pages of catalogue listing - Alberts takes 10 pages alone!

This gives a large collecting scope i.e. there's lots out there. More importantly, as Revenues (and not Cinderellas) they deserve some more status and research, and should be now exhibited in the Revenue class.

Australians would have first seen them very shortly after they appeared in the UK in 1912, as records were already being pressed especially for export to the Antipodes at that time. Thus the early regional labels like Kalophone and Rexophone would have appeared bearing UK stamps.

With the 'dumping' of older US and Canadian stock from 1924 to about 1927, Alberts, Allans and the like acting as agents for big overseas copyright holders such as Francis Day & Hunter, or MCPS, began producing their own stamps to be affixed to the imported records on arrival.

The growth of the local industry in the late 1920s increased the range of local issuers dramatically, and from then until the 1940s, a large volume of 78s in Australasia bore at least one stamp. Same for piano rolls. Most had finished with stamps by 1950, and all by the mid-60s.

Now my question to you.

Given the sheer number and variety of these stamps knocking around since WW1, and after 1927 in particular, why can't I find any contemporary reference to them, even in passing. Screeds have been written over the years on much more obscure (as in harder to find in the wild) local revenue stamps, but not these?

The same goes for the UK - vast numbers of stamps under philatelists noses for decades - zip in the philatelic press.

I'd love to hear your theories, and of course I'll try to answer any question on this topic too.

Cheers

Adam.

Roly posted some SUPERB photo examples of these Royalty stamps on this interesting thread about BHUTAN phonograph record stamps - which sell for over $US400 a SET!

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=1570

Glen

LB1,

Check out the site pointed to by the first post. Especially the Music Publishers link (most Australian issuers fell into this class).

I illustrate just 1 example of 1 design for each issuer, but in the Gallery section there's all sorts of larger images (topo big for this BB) with full sets of issues from the likes of Alberts and Collins.

If you follow the link to the Book, the whole of chapter F is online, which gives a good idea of the scope.

Adam.

Adam .. have you signed up for photobucket or similar - post some images!

OK OK

Australian Composers' stamps.

John Ashe (b. 1907, d.????), Country & Western composer, Australian Country Music 'Hands of Fame' in 1978.
One type, all unvalued.

Bernard Coghlan (1892?-1964)
2 different designs known.

Alfred Jarvis. Little known about him.
Just this one stamp seen so far. Yes, that's his initials in ink.

Reginald Stoneham, again not much known.
One design, 4 different values known.

Jack O'Hagan's publishing company, he was a popular songwriter & broadcaster before & after WW2.
One design, one value known so far.

All the above known to me through 5 or less examples (that's not of any particular value, that's in total for the issuer!), so would love to see more. I know you're out there....

Adam.

and an almost complete set of J. Albert & Son type 6a perf 11 sans-serif font, unsurfaced paper.



missing the 4 1/2d, 4 7/8d, 5d, 5 1/2d & 5 7/8d (copies not in good enough condition)

The very top values are commoner than the middling values (4d-6d) as they represented the pianola roll rate, while the very lowest values (under 3/4d) are also scarce.

I've seen Alberts items like these offered lately as New Zealand royalty stamps. Not so, the NZ-specific ones were almost always green with the signature in black. Maybe I'll make up a posting of those later.

Adam.

Hi Adam,


What a facinating thread

I work for a very large Broadcaster here in NZ and we have a relatively very large library of vynal and a lot of LP's as well.

I have quite a few Royalty Stamps but I think they are the common varieties but, like you, I have been unable to find reference material on the Net anywhere other than your site !!

(Great site incidentaly)

You mentioned in your introductory posts that one of the stamps I have is new to you? Which one is it and I will send you a decent scan of it for your reference. (I may be even persuaded to part with it )

I can see this thread turning into a real resource center so please keep up the interesting posts.

Cheers

Roly

As noted further up, Allan & Co were one of the more prolific issuers, generating stamps between 1918 and the mid-1960s.

To give you guys (and any gals) a better idea of the scale and range of what's out there, I though I'd post a near complete run of the known Allan & Co issues as a representative sample.

The images in the following messages were scanned at 100dpi, 256 colour web palette, and saved down as jpg's at 80% to get their file sizes between 100-130KB.

There's 12 in the next post, so I hope you're not on 56K dialup.

Allan & Co, Melbourne

Allans had its origins in the music selling firm of Wilkie & Webster, formed in Melbourne in 1850. In 1862 George L. Allan joined and the name became Wilkie, Webster & Allan. By the time he was 21, he had become a partner and the name became Allan & Co. In 1936 the Sydney branch of the company joined with Nicholson & Co Ltd of Sydney, which lasted until the mid-1950's when Allans sold their shares. In the mid-1970's the form became part of Brash's Holdings, continuing as a separate operation. As Allans Music Group, the company continues today as one of Australia's largest music publishers and retailers.

They were (are?) the local agency for the huge European copyright concern BIEM, so stamps marked BIEM Allans are to be found (but I catalogued those under BIEM)

We tossed out all Margaret's mother's 78's when she passed away recently.

Wish I had know there was a CATALOGUE of these things!

Glen

The first set was probably printed in the UK for export labels.
The first local series was green.


The top set was printed in the UK by Harrisons and stuck on export records. Similar designs (red OZ, green NZ) existed at the same time for Alberts, Collins and Davis.


The extensive deep dull blue set. There are 4 types of the 1 1/4d.





The third series was in red. As the N.Z. is obviously for New Zealand, we can assume the A means Australia.


There's that "A" again, only in manuscript. The last set of overprints look to have been done by typewriter, but probably by an Addressograph machine.


Back to blue again, but a brighter shade, and rouletted.


Earlier sets were extensively overprinted. There are two varieties of the 3/4d, differing in the font of the "3". I really like the inverts!





The last series, black values. A few pairs exist - but multiples of any copyright stamp are really rare.


Provisionally valued



Whew!

Adam

I never even knew these existed.

Thanks for posting them up and broadening everyones knowledge Adam78!!

People's own collections never cease to amaze me.

The time, the effort, the passion that goes into them is evident for all to see.

Cheers. Browny

I asked this question in my first post at the top of this thread - no answers or theories so far....c'mon team. How could a Melbourne company like Allans issue their wide variety of revenue stamps in front of several generations of local philatelists, and not have anyone notice

Question Adam,

Were these Royalty Stamps on the records that were sold to the general public in the record stores etc?

Were they not just on the records that were issued to the likes of the Public Broadcasters so that they knew how much Royalty was due?

That being the case, maybe only those (Philatalists) in Broadcasting would have known about them. Even then it would have been a bit naughty to remove them from the records ?

Just my suppositions and they could be way off the mark.

Cheers

Roly

Roly

These were on the records (& piano rolls) sold to the general public, and especially in the 20s, 30s & 40s , on a pretty high % of them too.

The special stamps found on the broadcast discs were, I believe, for showing the payment of broadcast royalties, rather than mechanical royalties.

Adam.

Just picked up some of these from Ebay.
Must admit that I have never seen these before.
Looks like another tangent I'm off on again!!!!
Seems like there is quite a few issues released back then?
BUT who has them all.....???

Ebay item 200181293434
Cheers,Ian...

Who has them all????

Me I reckon, or at least 90% of those listed in the catalogue. And about 20 new items have shown up so far this year - it's always exciting to locate something not seen before.

Now, if I only had them all in MUH condition - that'd be something to see.

BTW, nice purchase Ian, the last Alberts one is quite obscure.

Adam.

Just had a look at your "book" Adam.
Some very interesting literature there!!!!!
Hows the sales going?
Still have any copies left.
If I could find more "stock" of these issues I could be interested in purchasing one......
Cheers...

Folks as posted many times, for ebay lots PLEASE add entire hotlink to any lot

i.e.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0181293434

And PLEASE save the images in photobucket and post them so they are here for POSTERITY hopefully.

In a few months both the lot and the photos will be gone from ebay making the posts above totally meaningless to anyone.

_________________
.
Click HERE to see superb, RARE and unusual stamps, at FIXED low nett prices, high rez photos, and NO buyer fees etc!

You just need a large page.

Nice collections. Me either searching tax stamps. Mysleft have about 200 stamps. Later I will post some pics. And I have couple of stamps to selling.

After almost 3 years I have only just come across this thread - sorry!

Earlier in the year I commented to Adam about the New Zealand record stamps being revenue stamps; as such I believe that they are worthy of receiving full listings in the next edition of the Kiwi Catalogue of New Zealand Revenue and Railway Stamps catalogue.

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David Smitham
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Upper Hutt 2013 Stamp Show 13 - 15 September 2013 Upper Hutt, NZ.

Yes, as David says, I think they should be listed in the NZ Revenues catalogue.

This is what they look like.

First, the scarce two issued in NZ by NZ companies under the NZ Copyright Act. Yup, they're real small and rather insignificant - easy to overlook.



They are exceptionally scarce, and believe me, there's been a lot of looking over the years.
Of the Beggs (1952), 2 examples are known, both in private hands.

Of the Eady (1928-30), 5 are known, 3 in private hands. 2 exist still on records held in the National Library collection of 78rpm records.
Both have been written up in past issues of the New Zealand Stamp Collector - Eady in 76/4 and 79/4, Beggs in 79/4.

There are another related group. These were ones from Australian publishers who had enough of their recordings being released (or pressed) in New Zealand to have special stamps printed just for use in New Zealand. That is, you won't find these anywhere else in the world.





The "key type" items from Collin, Davis, Allan & Albert (bi-colour) are all British, dating from 1925-27 and were affixed to records pressed in Britain bearing songs where the copyright agent for Australasia was one of those 4, and where the records was being shipped to NZ. You never see them in Britain though - only for affixing to export items to NZ.

UK Records destined for Australia had very similar design stamps but in red (or red & green reversed for Alberts) Note that the Davis, Allan & Collin NZ stamps all have a tiki in their corners!



Allans and Alberts also had locally produced stamps printed in Australia for affixing to records pressed in Australia but being shipped for sale to NZ (and so covered under our Copyright Act). Davis overprinted a special series of blue stamps in red just for NZ (the blue stamps were never used in Australia). There are several different pence values known in the Davis & Alberts series. Again, you don't see these in Australia.

Alberts is by far the most common, followed by Allans, Davis then Collins.

I'd be keen to see what the Australians have managed to find over their side of the ditch in this area.

Adam.

Just for discussion sake, spotted this French label on a record while searching for other things on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w77t/4904380893/

Out of respect for the copyright of the (blurry) image, I refer you by link only. The [partial] description:

"Magic Note' sung by Caruso from Goldmark's opera 'The Queen of Sheba' on a German 'dogless horn Gramophone Record' label complete with royalty / tax stamp."

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Always seeking bookseller labels....Album of Book Trade Labels
Adventures in Book Collecting: Exile Bibliophile

Searched on purpose, found another:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26767201@N08/2561112815/

_________________
Always seeking bookseller labels....Album of Book Trade Labels
Adventures in Book Collecting: Exile Bibliophile