Dear fellow experts:  Here is a new thread and something I have never
seen written up anywhere.  In restoring a number of player pianos over
the years, most from the teens and twenties, I found that many of them
have some official looking government stamps stuck to the back side of
the sounding board.

Does anyone know the story on these? Were they a tax stamp?  What
was being taxed?  Were they federal stamps, or were they state or
local?  (Most of the pianos I have come in contact with were in New
York state.)  Were they based on value or were all the same?  Did
they change over the years?  Should we preserve them in a restoration?
Does anyone know what I am talking about?

There -- that is the sum total of what I know about them.  I open
the discussion to the great minds and vast knowledge of the Mechanical
Music Digest !

Thanks,

Bob Conant, Endicott, NY  (Currently hiding out in Fort Myers, FL)