The Penny Black Stamp Store: How Prices Have Changed

Sunday 3 February 2013

How Prices Have Changed

An extract from the Stanley Gibbons Investment Guide shows how the monetary value of the Penny Black has gone up with an astonishing 243% growth over the last 10 years. Take note that they refer to a superb mint example.

Source: Stanley Gibbons Investment Guide November 2012.

1 comment:

Cyberwoman Network said...: I have spent the entire day with a Vol.6 Scott catalog. I found two of the Yugoslavia King Alexander stamps with BLACK FRAME EDGES. Cancels of these stamps are identical into front & backside of stamps the same as stamps are with white edges. Could these be error stamps? My Grandfather of Germany & the war gave them to my mother of has been passed to me. Has anyone ever seen this?; 6 April 2013 at 07:47

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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.