This
young lady at left, in her hoop skirt and coat, is a perfect example of a
stamped CDV.War and Taxes
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Imagine a world where hardly anything you bought was taxed and the money you made was really the money you made. That all changed during the War Between the States (that's Civil War for those who are Southern-impaired). Mr. Lincoln implemented an income tax as well as some of the first sales taxes to fund the war effort.
To prove that a person was charged for and paid a tax, various stamps were devised that would be affixed to the item and cancelled by the merchant with a few pen strokes, initials and a date, or even stamp-cancelled like postage stamps. On a side note, the grandfathers of these tax payers had rebelled when England had taxed their goods in the identical manner.
Photographs, too were eventually taxed. And it's a good thing for collectors today. An image can be accurately dated if a stamp is found. The tax was levied on photographs in August 1864 and was in effect until August 1866 (one of the few times in American history where the government repealed a tax). More often than not, the photographer dated the time of cancellation. In those cases, the exact date of the image can be known.
This
young lady at left, in her hoop skirt and coat, is a perfect example of a
stamped CDV.
A stamp is simply stuck to the back. The photographer initialed "G W P" and the date 4/5/65 - four days before the end of the war.
Stamps were produced for various kinds of taxes, but at least for photographs, there doesn't seem to be any attention to which was used. This stamp is a Foreign Exchange stamp.
Below are a few more that have been found on the backs of CDVs, but it is by no means an exhaustive listing, there are many other kinds of stamps seen.
This is a close-up of the above stamp.
This might have been a catch-all stamp as its designation is simply "U.S. Inter(nal) Rev(enue)". It was canceled with a pencil. Created in 1864 (and unconstitutionally), Internal Revenue has plagued us ever since.
Originally intended as a tax stamp for telegraphed messages, this one made its way to a parlor to be cancelled with three pen strokes.