5 cents, dark blue.
The stamp is identical with the two and ten cent values, with the value changed, and the portrait of Taylor from the six ounce tobacco stamp of the "series of 1871," placed in the medallion.
Both the two cent vermilion and the five cent blue, bear the imprint "Printed by the Continental Bank Note Company," which also prepared the tobacco stamp in question.
These two stamps have been chronicled as having been issued grilled. The error crept into the French edition of this work likewise, but they were at least never so issued for circulation.
All the values as issued by this company have likewise been chronicled as unperforated. If they are not accounted for as indicated under the remarks made on page 172, they are the result of accident.
In many cases indistinct dots can be seen where the perforating machine failed to do its work. Such specimens are curious but do not require more than mention.
Before the second contract with the Continental Bank Note Co. expired, it was consolidated with the American Bank Note Co. under, the name of the American Bank Note Company, and new plates began to appear with the imprint of this company, in large colored block capitals, shaded by a colored line parallel to the letters and an outside row of lighter horizontal lines.
The one, two, three, five and ten are found with this imprint, without material change. The seven, twelve and twenty-four cent having long been retired are not to be looked for with this imprint, and the fifteen, thirty and ninety cents at this time were still printed from the plates, with the imprint of the Continental Bank Note Co.
The gum has the white shade and the colors are the same as used by that company.
The one cent of the dull indigo blue.