Classic Stamps

    

The Penny Black, with its partner Tuppence Blue, are generally regarded as being the World's first postage stamps. They were issued on 6th May 1840, and in the course of the next eight or nine months, more than 70 million of them passed over the Post Office counters. A Penny Black paid to send a letter of half an ounce (14g for the metricated among us) anywhere in Great Britain and Ireland. It is a common misconception that Penny Blacks are very rare, they aren't. They are extremely popular as the subject of collections here and around the world, and this popularity leads to quite firm prices, but the stamps are definitely not rare. A good, collectable, stamp such as that illustrated is probably worth about £50 to £60. Much depends on the size of the margins, and the clarity of the postmark.

Strangely, given the extent of the Empire in the 1840s, the next stamps did not come from any British territories, but as a local issue from Zurich on 1st March 1843, and as a 'proper' issue from Brazil on 1st August 1843, with a famous stamp known as the 'Bull's Eye'



Early stamps were not subject to any rules or regulations about the display of country name, or anything else for that matter - there was no international co-ordination of postal services until the foundation of the Universal Postal Union in 1874!

The United States was a relatively late starter with their first stamps coming along in 1847



at approximately the same time as the Indian Ocean territory of Mauritius. The stamps of Mauritius were evidently based on the designs of the first British stamps.

    

Invitations to a ball at Government House were being prepared, and the Governor's Lady thought that it would be a novelty if they bore postage stamps to carry them through the mail. As there were no official issues for Mauritius, Penny and Two Pence stamps were engraved locally. The invitations arrived on time, but these early issues are now rare and expensive, but thanks to the marvels of modern science you, too, can study examples in your own home!

For a number of years, stamps were relatively staid in their designs, usually featuring the portrait of a monarch or president, or a coat of arms, or the value of the stamp. But as the nineteenth century progressed, designs became a little more adventurous.

         

In 1853, The Cape of Good Hope decided that it took too much effort to cut round four-sided stamps, and introduced their famous three-sided triangular stamps, while the New Brunswickians chose to stick with four-sided stamps but turned them round to stand on their corner. Still in New Brunswick, the Postmaster General became officially unpopular in 1860 when he ordered up some new 5c stamps with his own portrait instead of that of Queen Victoria!

    

Straight from (or to...) the Wild West, the two cent stamp showing the Pony Express at full gallop was issued by the United States in 1869,  Meanwhile, after years of pedestrian designs featuring first Ceres and then the Emperor Napoleon III, France started on  its first exploration of modern artistry with a handsome series issued in 1876, a tradition maintained over many years and many issues.

Meanwhile, back where it all started, the good old General Post Office came up with a triumph of design for the new penny stamp of 1881. This design lasted for twenty years until the accession of King Edward VII.

           

The later stamps of Queen Victoria, and those of King Edward VII, and King George V, were printed by typography, just like most other printing of the day. The result was a product which was serviceable, but the process did not lend itself to any great subtlety either of design or shading. And then photogravure came along. This process had been pioneered in Bavaria before the first World War, but did not reach the British stamp buying public until 1934. The Post Office, in yet another fit of forward thinking, missed the opportunity to produce a range of modern designs to match the modern printing process, and merely photographed the existing designs. The more things change the more we can keep them the same!

We have reached the point at which stamps for regular everyday use are recognisably the same as the ones we use today.



Their form and function are well known and fairly well fixed. But there is more to stamps than just the 'definitive' issues. There are commemorative stamps, which are issued to celebrate special events, and there are pictorial stamps which show in fascinating variety the world around us.

Why not visit our Commemorative page, or our Pictorial page, to see what we mean?