Great British Stamps – part 1

Great British Stamp Collecting – part one

This is my brief (sorry, it was meant to be, but you know what it’s like, one thought leads to another and then another and before you know where you are, you have almost written a book) introduction to Great British Stamp collecting.
I hope that you find at least some of it interesting. If not, never mind, you will probably only waste a half hour of your life reading it.
I have tried to be as accurate as possible, so hopefully there are no real major mistakes. A few comments are my personal opinions, but mostly it is I believe factual. But hey, I’m not quite perfect, so if you know that something is wrong, please let me know via the feedback form.
It is broken down into sections and you probably arrived here after reading one of my brief introductions on one of the Index pages of the site.  You will find that each section is broken down into these same brief intros. Therefore if you want to find out only about Presentation Packs, then please scroll down to that section.
The first sections deal with the basic reigns. Later sections give some info on more specific area, PHQ cards for example.
Ask most people what the first Stamp ever issued in the World was and most will answer the Great British Penny Black. Go onto most general knowledge based websites, same answer.  This is actually only half true and depends on how you define the question, as the 2d Blue was issued on the same day.
The 6th May 1840 was where it all started for stamp collectors. Again this is only a half truth. If you have large pockets you can actually find earlier posted stamps, but let us start at the beginning.
In the beginning
The first unrecognized postmen were in fact the Romans. They brought messengers with them when they invaded Britain. The messenger system was expanded over the centuries, at first used solely by The King. Sheriffs, Bailiffs and Noble men started to use them as well. As trade grew and Cities and Town’s expanded, so did the messenger system of communication. In fact many of our road networks and Inns of today owe their existence to the delivery of letters.
In the early 1600’s the State took control of all messenger services and banned private carriers. Could this have been the first Monopoly? The Post Office has remained solely Government owned ever since!
Charles I created what was the start of the Post Office as we know it in 1635 and made delivering of documents and letters available to all subjects. Though in reality, only a very small proportion of the population could read and write.
In 1657 Oliver Cromwell established the General Post Office. There were many developments over the next 200 years, but this is an area that is covered by what is termed Pre Stamp Postal History.
In 1837, Rowland Hill publishes Post Office Reform and so begins the development of the postal system we know of today. 1839 and the Postage Act is passed, whereby the Treasury is given until October 1840 to make arrangements for the introduction of a universal penny postage system.
Great British Queen Victoria Stamps – Issued 1840 to 1892.
To give you an idea of how amazing the postal system was in those days, many letters exist where only the person’s name and town were put onto the envelope and they still arrived.
 As it was the Royal mail, Queen Victoria’s head was used on the stamps. The practice of using the reigning monarchs’ head or image is still used today for all GB stamps and as long as this is the case, the Universal Postal Union agreed that Great British stamps do not need to have our Country name on them. We are the only country in the world not to have our name on. So, if you find a stamp with no country name, then it is British. One little interesting point here though, is don’t be fooled by stamps bearing the name Victoria. Stamp dealers are always being told by people that they have a GB stamp they have found and that it must be British, as it has the name Victoria printed on it. The Victoria actually refers to the Australian State of Victoria!

Line Engraved Stamps
January 1840 and the Uniform Penny Post is officially introduced. This means that a letter weighing up to one ounce can for the first time be sent anywhere in the Country for one penny if pre paid or two pence, if paid for upon receipt. The reality of this is not quite true, as many houses had to pay extra due to their location. May 6th 1840 and the Penny Black and 2d Blue are officially introduced.  However, there are earlier dates known of the use of the Penny Black. The earliest being 1st May.
So, we go back to the general knowledge question at the top of this article. If the question is – What was the first stamp issued in the world, then the answer is both the Penny Black and the 2d Blue. But if the question is what Stamp was the first one ever used, the answer is indeed the Penny Black. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be on ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ and have this question as my Million Pounds one.
The first stamps issued used the printing process known as Line Engraved. Plates were engraved by highly skilled engravers. Ink was applied to the plate and the excess wiped off. Paper was then pressed onto the plate, forcing the paper into the recessed areas, thus leaving the inked part of the plate transferred to the stamp. When you consider that 240 stamps were printed from each plate and it is almost impossible, if not impossible to tell what plate the stamp came from by purely looking at the engraving. There are ways to tell for most stamps, but this is a very skilled part of collecting and has been made easier for collectors of today, only by people who spent years and years researching. Most of us use these reference works. Actually, this is how I can write all this.
If you look at my line Engraved section of the site, you will see that the first plate used for the Penny stamp was obviously plate 1 (actually 1a and 1b) and the last was plate 225.
Plates were replaced as they wore out. A few were not used at all, mainly as they failed quality control.
Line engraved issues are all many collectors collect. This is because the area of what can be collected is vast. Just to give you a brief idea:
First you have the Penny Black, plates 1a through to 11 (11 being very scarce as it only had a short life).
2d Blue, plates 1 to 15.
Penny Reds plates 1b through to 225.
½d Reds – Plates 1 to 20
1½d Reds – Plates 1 and 3.
All with 240 stamps to a sheet (½d had 480, as they were only half the size), each stamp with different check letters at least in the bottom two corners (this, along with the watermark were security measures against fakes. Top left was AA working across the AL, then down to the T row).
So, to have a truly complete collection of line engraved GB stamps, you would be talking about 60,000+ stamps!
Then you have the postmarks. Red Maltese Cross at first, then Black, then Town cancels etc. Postmarks as we call them today were not called that at first. They were actually obliterators and were meant to do just that, obliterate the stamp to stop it being used again. Many collectors specialize in collecting postmarks from this period.
At first the sheets of stamps were imperf, with no perforations and all the stamps had to be cut out using scissors. Postal workers were meant to take care when cutting them out and insure that they cut in the margins surrounding each stamp. In practice though, this was not done very often, hence 4 clear margin stamps commanding a price premium. The Penny Black was soon replaced by the Penny Red, as it was decided that Black was not really a suitable colour and that it was not difficult to find stamps that could be used again as the postmark failed to show up clearly enough. Perforations were developed to aid in the tearing of the sheet. Roulettes were tested at first and early trials using both these methods are scarce if not rare and again command a premium. At first there were no plate markings on any stamps and collectors have to use certain characteristics found only on a particular stamp to aid plating. In 1858 the plate numbers were for the first time incorporated into the design of the 2d Blue values. It wasn’t for another 6 years, in 1864 that visible plate numbers were used for the Penny red.
Interesting fact (at least I think it is): Many non collectors when finding out that I am a GB stamp dealer, say “ I bet you haven’t got a Penny Black” and are amazed when I tell them, that I have at least 100 in stock at any one time. It is only when I explain that they are actually very common and that a basic one with faults can sell for £20 or less. This is because over 60 million were issued in less than a year. With the introduction of the Penny Postage rate, suddenly most people could afford to write letters. Therefore for example, you no longer had to spend a day visiting your granny in the next town, you wrote to her. In fact, the Penny Post could be regarded as a catalyst that helped with the literacy of the lower classes’ as they were so called then.
Why are they so common, how comes so many survived until today? Well, believe it or not, we mostly have Businesses, solicitors, Government dept’s and Banks to thank for this and not forgetting the Second World War.  I’ll explain. Businesses, Solicitors, Government Dept’s and Banks had to keep stacks and stacks of letters and documents etc. These were all filed away in achieves or vaults. Now the best example is to think of the City of London. Hundreds and hundreds of these cramped into a small area and what happens – The Germans bomb the place. Buildings burn, get bomb damaged and low and behold, there are all these letters etc floating about. Well, a hell of a lot of it went walkies! And thousands upon thousands of Penny blacks come onto the market, along with a lot of other stuff as well.
Unfortunately, the vast majority were torn off their covers, as Postal History wasn’t really the in thing at the time. God knows what gems were lost forever when this happened.
When I first started in this business, I met a dealer who used to be a Fire Warden in the City during the war. The stories he told, God bless him, he’s dead now, but it certainly helped him start in the stamp business. And when a Post Office got hit- jackpot!
Of course a lot of private material survived by being kept by the recipient. Much in the same way that we today will put a letter away for safe keeping, possibly to read once in awhile.
A few other little snippets of information:
1843 the first Christmas card is posted.
1852 and the first ever post box is trailed in Jersey.
1870 the first Postcard is issued.
1873 Women are allowed to work for the Post Office.
1874 Married women were banned from working for the Post Office and if a single woman got married, she had to resign. This practice remained in force for over 70 years!
1912 The Post Office acquires full control of the Telephone system.
1918 The standard cost of sending a letter is raised from 1d to 1½d due to rising costs, thus ending the Penny Post which had been in existence since 1840. I’ll save you the math, it’s 78 years!
2006 Royal Mail introduces ‘pricing in proportion’.  This is the most significant change in postage procedures since the introduction of the penny post. Mail is charged according to both weight and the size.
Embossed Stamps
Only 3 values were issued in the Embossed series and were all imperforate. They had a very short life span. The most notably thing with these stamps is that they were printed one at a time. This resulted in most stamps touching the design of the next stamp, if not overlapping it. In many cases, when you see a row or block of these stamps, the alignment is terrible. This is the reason that these stamps are catalogued so highly. The price is based on a stamp with clear margins and these are scarce. There are many collectors who have been duped into paying way over the odds for these stamps, simply because they have no understanding of what the catalogue price is based on. Because the stamps were of an Octagonal design with a white border, many were cut to shape, thus removing this border and these are worth only a fraction of the value of cut square stamps.
Care should be taken when buying the 6d value. As the die for this stamp was later used in producing the pre paid embossed envelopes. Many envelopes were cut and the stamp sold as being the Embossed 6d value. These have very little value when sold by their true identity.
Surface Printed Stamps
As the Embossed issues were so unsatisfactory, it was decided to produce stamps using the Surface Printed method. The contract for the production of these stamps with values of 2d and above was given to Thomas De La Rue. The Line Engraved issues below 2d continued to be printed by Perkins, Bacon and Co. until 1880.  After 1880 De La Rue printed all GB stamps until the latter part of Edward 7th reign.
In this printing process, the technique is basically the reverse of Line Engraved whereby the recessed parts of the plate transfer varying amounts or no ink to the paper depending on how deep the recess is cut.
The Surface Printed issues of Victoria are wonderful. During this time, many different values and Colours were produced. Many of the stamps can be collected with different plate numbers. The only sad thing for collectors is that so few used stamps escaped the dreaded obliterator. Most of the lower values are therefore heavily used, as all stamps were supposed to be literally obliterated and the cancels in use for most of this period were the Bar type which did the job rather well. This is why during this period, stamps sold as fine used are nothing like as fine as later issues when the CDS (Circular Date Stamp) came into use more. Some did escape, some, when two or more stamps were applied to the envelope and the postal clerk either couldn’t be bothered or forgot to cancel each stamp separately. Sometimes you will see pairs, strips or blocks with only one cancel and these are sold at a premium and are described as Contrary to regulations.
The most common source of Very Fine Used stamps (CDS) from this period though is from Telegraph receipts or Post Office in hose accounting.
Most of the high value stamps of Victoria (2/6 and above) were used in this way. Very few high values, particularly the £5 Orange (SG 133/137), were ever stuck on envelopes and postally used.
Some values, notably the 1 shilling Green value (SG 115/17) plates 5, 6 and 7 are far more common with lovely CDS postmarks than they are with bar cancels. This is because a great many were used on telegraph forms in the Stock Exchange.
In 1898 some of these forms came into the stamp market and it was discovered that some of the stamps were skillful forgeries. They had gone undetected for 20+ years and the person responsible was never discovered. This would have been a very lucrative venture at the time. As the clerk who did it, would have been able to pocket 1 shilling every time he applied one of the fakes instead of the real stamp.
In 1883/4 the Lilac and Green issues were introduced. The green values were not good news for collectors of used stamps, as the ink is fugitive and can easily wash out in water when soaking off paper.  This fugitive green ink was used for some later issues as well and fine coloured used copies are difficult to find.
The final series of stamps of Queen Victoria’s reign are without doubt the best in my opinion. The Jubilee issues are the first GB stamps where two colours were applied to some values. They are quite simply beautiful!
They are known as the Jubilee issue simply because they started to appear in the same year as her 50th anniversary of the accession to the throne in 1887.
They were not produced to celebrate this fact, so cannot be regarded as the first commemorative issue.
2 major errors on stamps occurred in the reign of Victoria, there are others, but these 2 stand out.
The first is the OP-PC error instead of CP-PC on 1½d Reds plate 1 (SG 51/52). Issued in October 1870 and continued for 4 years, it was not discovered by anyone until 1894. Amazing, as the error occurs on every sheet of Plate 1.
The second is LH-FL instead of LH-HL on the 2½d Rosy Mauve (SG 140).
Great British Edward 7 Stamps – Issued 1902 to 1913
At first Printed by De La Rue, then Harrison and finally Somerset House.
The reign of Edward 7 is notable for collectors in the wonderful diversity of the shades available to collectors. Whilst on the face of it, only 19 stamps were issued during his reign, the fact that three different printers were used, two distinct papers used, two different sizes of perforations and the wonderful variation of shades makes this area another that can form the sole basis of someone’s Specialised Stamp Collection.
Again as with the Jubilee issues, some stamps are bicolour.
As De La Rue had a contract to print stamps until 1909, they printed all GB postage stamps until 1910. The first stamps they produced were on what is termed as Ordinary paper. In 1905 Chalk surfaced paper started to be used for some values.
In 1909 the printing contract was up for renewal. The Inland Revenue wanted De La Rue to lower the cost of the contract. Basically, it was getting cheaper to produce stamps and The Revenue wanted a larger cut of the cake. Sorry, but I have to say it. Some things never change!!
De La Rue refused and lost the contract.
Harrison and Sons took over the contract on January 1st 1911. Whilst King Edward had died in May 1910, his stamps were still being used, as the New King George 5th stamps would not be ready for some time. Harrison therefore took over the printing of the single colour stamps of Edward 7th. They couldn’t do the bicoloured ones as they did not have the machinery to do so. Therefore Somerset House produced these. Edward 7th stamps continued to be printed up until as late as 1913.
How to tell which stamp is from which printer. In some cases, it is easy once you know how. Firstly, if the stamp is perforated 15×14 then it must be Harrison. If it is Chalky paper, then apart from the 6d value, it must be De La Rue. It does then get harder and needs experience in determining the shades. There are a few general guides that are very useful for this. An example is the Purples used by both De La Rue and Somerset House for the 1½d, 6d, 9d, 10d and 2/6 values. Most of the Somerset House printings of these values have the purple showing as much Redder than De La Rue printings.  To see what I mean, have a look at my Specialised Colour Guide for Edward 7th stamps.
Generally stamps printed by De La Rue were of a better quality, certainly over Harrison’s efforts.
Great British George 5 Stamps – Issued 1911 to 1936
The Reign of King George 5th is really the gem for specialised stamp collectors.  There are a huge array of shades (see my Specialised Colour Guides for each Specialised section), watermark variations and errors for specialist collectors. For me though, the Reign contains the most beautiful stamps ever issued – Seahorses.
The first George 5th stamps were not ready for issue until June 1911, over a year since his accession and then only the ½d and 1d values. It would take yet another year before any of the other values were ready. Hence the reason why some values of Edward 7th continued to be produced until 1913.
The first stamps were the Mackennal (Downey Heads). For what is in essence a set of three stamps (by this I mean clear and easily seen differences), the variations available in shades, errors and watermarks is amazing.
The second series issued were the Royal Cypher. These are the jewel in the crown when it comes to shades for specialists. The range of shades is fantastic. (Please go to my George 5 specialised royal cyphers image page to see what I mean).  My listing is per Gibbons specialised Volume 2 and this list can be expanded on beyond that and is by many collectors. A lot of the shade variations were due to a lack of ink during the war period.
Block Cypher were next, mostly the same designs and values as the royal cypher set, but with a different watermark. Again there are some nice shade variations available.
The Photogravure series completes the low value definitive issues.
Then we have the high values, better known as the Seahorses. Primarily two designs printed by 3 different printers, each with their own characteristics, again with some wonderful shade variations.
As I stated earlier, these stamps to me are the most beautiful ever issued. The design is just fantastic. Maybe I yearn for Empire and was born too late, but they just ooze a time when Britannia truly did rule the waves!!
The most significant thing about George 5th reign as far as stamp collecting is concerned, is that it contained the first Great British Commemorative issue, The 1924 Wembley Exhibition. This was followed a little over a year later by the 1925 set and a further two commemorative sets were issued later. Only 4 sets in 11 years, now there’s a thought!
It also saw the introduction of the first Postage Due stamps. Up until their introduction a handstamp was applied to the envelope to indicate a fee payable by the receiver. In 1914 a set of Postage Due stamps were issued and these were then applied to the cover. A later set was issued with a new higher value, but with Block Cypher watermark replacing the Royal Cypher one.
One final thing about George 5th that must be mentioned is that he was an avid stamp collector. This was to such an extent that it really is down to his enthusiasm that the Royal Philatelic Collection of Great Britain and the Commonwealth is without doubt by far the best collection of its kind in the world.

Tags: collect collecting, Great British Stamps, philately, stamps, victoria