02/20/2008 Contact:
Fred Baumann
Also available in .pdf format
A
Singular Donation - More
Than
32,000 Penny Red Stamps
 |
| Mercer
Bristow, Director of the American Philatelic Expertizing
Service and curator of the APS Reference Collection, displays
a complete reconstruction of a 240-stamp plate used to print
Great Britain’s Penny Red stamps of 1864 in one of
two hand-made albums housing a collection of this stamp — the
last of the early line-engraved definitive stamps of Queen
Victoria’s reign. |
On
Thursday, December 20, 2007, the American Philatelic Society
received a gift of 32,000 face-different copies of Great Britain’s
1864 Penny Red stamps from the reign of Queen Victoria, housed
in two large, hand-made, leather-covered folio albums.
The
gift included 111 complete reconstructions of the original
12- by 20-subject plates that were used to print the 240-stamp
sheets, as well as 23 additional plate reconstructions that
are largely complete.
The
estimated value of this remarkable single-stamp collection — the
generous gift of Dr. Edward D. Martin of Arlington, Virginia — is
the equivalent of more than $400,000 U.S., based on the current
Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, published in the United Kingdom.
How
can a collection contain more than 32,000 copies of the same
stamp? And how can such a collection be so valuable?
Printed
in rose red, brick red, or lake red, line-engraved 1-penny
stamps< used
in Great Britain between 1864 and 1879 can be collected according
to which of 240 positions they came from in each of the 152
plates that were
used to print them — a theoretical
total of 36,480 possible face-different varieties, not including
shades and imperforate errors.
|
| Great
Britain’s Penny Red stamps of 1864-1879 can be collected
according to plate number and position. The letters printed
in the lower corners of the stamp (and in reverse order
in the top corners) give the postition — “T” (the
20th row) and “J” (the 10th column) in the
240-stamp sheet. The plate number — “78” — is
incorporated into the scrollwork along the sides of the
stamps (rotated and enlarged slightly in the panel below).
(Click on the images for a larger view.) |
 |
In
the example shown above, the letters printed in the lower corners
of the stamp (and in reverse order in the top corners) give
the position — “T” (the
20th row) and “J” (the
10th column) — in the 240-stamp sheet. The plate number — “78” in
the example illustrated — is incorporated sideways centered
into the looping scrollwork along the sides of the stamps.
Every
1864 Penny Red that was printed is a plate number single. That’s
why the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, which
lists the stamp as Great Britain Scott 33 in Volume 3, takes
the unusual step of listing mint and used values for each plate
number, from Plate No. 71 to Plate No. 225. Used values vary
from the Scott minimum of $2.25 for this 144-year-old stamp up
to $80 for stamps from Plate No. 219, with two important exceptions.
The
last plate, Plate No. 225, was used to print only about 12,500
sheets, and is thus comparatively rare, with single stamps cataloguing
$750 in used condition. (At the other extreme is Plate No. 140,
from which 982,500 sheets, or 235 million stamps, were printed
in 1870.) Penny Reds from Plate 77 
are probably the rarest regular
issue British stamps every produced, with only 7 or 8 examples
known. The plate was rejected, and how examples ever reached
the public is unclear. Scott lists this stamp at $150,000 mint
and $130,000 used, and the values listed in the Stanley Gibbons
catalogue that is most widely used in the United Kingdom are
higher still. (Stamps from Plates 75, 126, 128 were never issued.)
Why
did Great Britain go to all the trouble of ensuring that every
stamp could be identified by plate and position? Fear of fraud
motivated these security measures. From the time it released
the world’s first nationally issued adhesive postage stamp
in 1840, the British Post Office had greatly feared that crooks
would devise schemes to counterfeit, clean, or reuse postage
stamps, or use other nefarious means to defraud them of postal
income. The engine-turned patterns of line engraving were meant
to deter would-be forgers. The check letters in the bottom corners
of the stamps, reversed in the top corners, were meant to prevent
chiselers from cunningly trimming the upper and lower portions
of two partially canceled stamps and combining the parts, Frankenstein-style,
to cheat the crown of its rightful penny.
|
| Click
on the image for a larger view. |
Similarly,
there is also a practical explanation for the 240-stamp sheets
of this issue. Beginning with the 1840 Penny Black, British
penny stamps were printed in sheets of 240 (printed 20 down
by 12 across), so that one sheet cost one pound and one 12-stamp
row cost one shilling (12 pence was one shilling and there
were 20 shillings, or 240 pence, to the British pound). Ten
months after the 1840 Penny Black was issued, the color of
penny stamps was changed to red brown in order to make cancellation
of the stamps easier to see (and make the fraudulent reuse
of lightly canceled stamps more difficult to accomplish).
If
you are considering making a donation of philatelic material
to the American Philatelic Society or American Philatelic Research
Library, contact Ken
Martin at 814-933-3817.
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