The Penny Black Stamp Store: Collector takes along stamp worth £25,000 to Sheringham Charity Event

Wednesday 27 August 2014

Collector takes along stamp worth £25,000 to Sheringham Charity Event

The Victorian Penny Black was valued at £25,000 at a charity event held on 10 August 2014 which was owned by former prison nurse, Robin Barr-Thomson of Northrepps. He also brought along his 1843 and 1844 penny reds, and a set of four first day covers commemorating the 1935 silver jubilee of King George V that was valued at £600. A lifelong collector who also attended the event, Mr Harvey, said that Mr Barr-Thomson’s collection was by far the most valuable he had seen. “Stamps can be worth anything from a few pennies to thousands, depending on their condition and plate number, so they really are fascinating,” Mr Harvey said. Mr Barr-Thomson, who owns “several thousand” stamps, said “Because they (stamps) hold and increase their value, stamps really are a good investment,” he went on to comment that stamps “also commemorate important events and convey a lot of information about history, geography and culture, so you can get great pleasure from owning and looking at them.”

Source: Eastern Daily Press News

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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.