The Penny Black Stamp Store: PB06: A Penny Black with Generous Borders and a Well-Centered Crisp Cancellation

Monday 27 June 2011

PB06: A Penny Black with Generous Borders and a Well-Centered Crisp Cancellation

Code PB06: SG2 / 1840 issued Penny Black 1d Black: The well centered crisp strike of the deep red Maltese Cross cancellation gives this Penny Black a sense of spacious scale. This O-K stamp from the scarce Plate 6 has very generous borders all round. Unperforated Victorian stamps with large borders as this piece are very well sought after and hard to find. ~~£255.00~~ SOLD shipped from the United Kingdom. A handsome stamp, worth every penny!

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A Brief History

Before 1st May 1840, posting a letter was a very complicated and expensive affair. It could cost the equivalent of a days wage, and it was charged by how many sheets of paper were used and how far it had to travel. Normally the recipient had to pay the cost.

Sir Roland Hill was responsible for reforming the British postal system, and as part of this a competition was held for the public to design the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. However none of the entries were thought suitable, so instead they used the profile sketch of a then 15 year old Queen Victoria. This image was used on stamps until the end of her reign. Because the Penny Black was the first postage stamp in the world, it did not show a country of origin, and to this day British stamps are the only stamps in the world that do not state what country they are from.

However, the Penny Black only remained in circulation for a year, as it was soon found that it was possible to remove the ink of the red cancellation mark and re-use the stamp, so the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and black cancellation ink.