Portal:Philately/Stamp of the month archive

Stamp of the month archive

Stamp of the month archive 1

Portal:Philately/Stamp of the month archive/1

Chalon heads, were a series of postage stamps issued by many British colonies, inspired by a portrait of Queen Victoria. The head came from a painting by Alfred Edward Chalon (1870-1860), drawn for the first public appearance of Victoria as Queen on the occasion of her speech at the House of Lords in July 1837. Chalon's work was intended as a gift from Victoria to her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

Issued from the 1850s until 1912, in Queensland, in chronological order, they were released in the Province of Canada in 1851, Nova Scotia in 1853, Tasmania and New Zealand in 1855, The Bahamas and Natal in 1859, Grenada, New Brunswick and Queensland in 1860, and in 1870 in Prince Edward Island.

The effigy, found mainly on small sized stamps, appears inside an oval that has two main forms: the oval is either large enough to show the Queen's necklace or too small, so that only the upper part of the neck is visible, excluding the necklace. However, on the New Zealand stamps the circle has a larger diameter, so the upper part of the State Robes are also visible.

Stamp of the month archive 2

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Dag Hammarskjöld invert, is a 4-cent value postage stamp error issued on 23 October 1962 by the United States Post Office Department. The stamp, showing the yellow background inverted relative to the image and text, is also known as the Day's Folly after Postmaster General J. Edward Day who ordered the intentional reprinting of the yellow invert.

The stamp reprint of 40 million stamps was a deliberate error produced to avoid creating a rarity and was issued to the public within a month of the original issue date. The discovery sheet was owned by Leonard Sherman, a New Jersey jeweler, who donated his sheet to the American Philatelic Society in 1987 because the reprint dashed his hopes of owning a valuable stamp error.

Stamp of the month archive 3

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Uganda Cowries, also known as the Uganda Missionaries, were the first adhesive postage stamps of Uganda. They were made on a typewriter in March 1895, because there was no printing press in Uganda. After a much-needed new typewriter ribbon arrived, the colour of the characters changed from black to a violet colour. The stamps were valid for postage within the Kingdom of Buganda; in adjoining kingdoms and provinces they were used only for communications between officials of the Church Missionary Society.

The stamps were denominated in different values of cowries (monetary seashells), at 200 cowries per rupee or 12 1/2 cowries = 1d. The simple design shows only the initials of the jurisdiction and a number for the denomination. Forgeries are known, and only a small number of genuine stamps seem to have survived. Surcharged values also exist; of these Robson Lowe commented, "All are rare. We do not recall selling a copy in over 25 years."

Stamp of the month archive 4

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Scinde Dawk stamps, issued in 1852, were the first adhesive postage stamps in Asia, the forerunners of the adhesive stamps to be used throughout India, Burma, the Straits Settlements and other areas controlled by the British East India Company (EIC). These three round stamps all bore the Merchants' Mark of the EIC inside a design embossed in different colors. The first Scinde Dawk stamps were on wafers of red sealing wax impressed on paper.

The Scinde Dawk was a very old postal system of runners that served the Indus Valley region of Sindh, an area of present-day Pakistan. After the East India Company's conquest of Sindh, they had military and commercial needs that demanded more efficient communications. Sir Bartle Frere’s reforms, modeled on the English example set by Rowland Hill, introduced a cheap and uniform rate for postage. Adhesive stamps were required.

Stamp of the month archive 5

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The Basel Dove was a postage stamp issued by the Swiss canton of Basel on 1 July 1845 with a value of 2 1/2-rappen. At the time each canton was responsible for its own postal service. There were no uniform postal rates for Switzerland until after the establishment of a countrywide postal service on 1 January 1849.

The stamp, designed by the architect Melchior Berri, featured a white embossed dove carrying a letter in its beak, and was inscribed "STADT POST BASEL". The stamp is printed in black, crimson, and blue, making it the world's first tri-colored stamp. It became invalid for use after 30 September 1854, by which time 41,480 stamps had been printed.

Stamp of the month archive 6

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The Inverted Swan, a 4-pence blue postage stamp issued in 1855 by Western Australia, was one of the world's first invert errors. Technically, it is a "frame invert". In 1854, Western Australia issued its first stamps, featuring the colony's symbol, the Black Swan. The 1d black was engraved in Great Britain by Perkins Bacon while other values, including the 4d blue, were produced in Perth with different frames around the swan design for each value.

In January 1855, additional 4d stamps were needed. When the printing stone was brought out of storage it was found that two of the impressions had been damaged, so they had to be redone. One of the replaced frames was tilted; the other was accidentally redone upside-down. Ninety-seven sheets were printed before the mistake was discovered and corrected, resulting in a total of 388 errors being printed.The errors went unrecognized and unreported for several years and only 15 complete copies, plus a part of a stamp in a strip of three, have survived.

Stamp of the month archive 7

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Hawaiian Missionaries are the first postage stamps of the Kingdom of Hawaii, issued in 1851. They came to be known as the "Missionaries" because they were primarily found on the correspondence of missionaries working in the islands. An astonishing lore surrounds this stamp: in 1892, one of its earlier owners, Gaston Leroux, was murdered for it by an envious fellow philatelist, Hector Giroux.

Only a handful of these stamps have survived. The stamps went on sale October 1, 1851, in three denominations: 2-cent, 5-cent and 13-cent values. A 6-cent appeared later. The design was very simple, consisting only of a central numeral of the denomination framed by standard printer's ornaments, with the denomination repeated in words at the bottom.

Although the stamps were in regular use until as late as 1856, of the four values issued only about 200 have survived, of which 28 are unused, and 32 are on cover. The 2-cent is the rarest of the Hawaiian Missionaries, with 15 copies recorded. When Maurice Burrus sold his 2-cent stamp in 1921 the price was US$15,000; Alfred Caspary sold the same stamp in 1963 for $41,000, the highest price ever paid for a stamp at the time. The current estimated value of a mint copy is GB £450,000.

Stamp of the month archive 8

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The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on May 1, 1840, for use from May 6.

The idea of an adhesive stamp to indicate prepayment of postage was part of Rowland Hill's 1837 proposal to reform the British postal system. A companion idea which Hill disclosed on February 13, 1837 at a government inquiry was that of a separate sheet which folded to form an enclosure or envelope for carrying letters. At that time postage was charged by the sheet and distance involved and the inquiry Hill noted that the stamp idea might obviate the envelope.

Stamp of the month archive 9

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The Inverted Jenny was a postage stamp, issued by the United States on May 10, 1918. The image of a Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design was accidentally printed upside-down. One sheet, of 100 stamps, was found at a post office and bought by a collector just four days after issue on May 14 and sold soon afterwards for US$15,000.

Because the stamp was printed in two colors, each sheet had to be fed through the printing press twice, a process that resulted in the invert error. Several misprinted sheets were found during the production process and destroyed. This error is one of the most prized in all philately; as of 2003, an inverted Jenny would typically sell for around US$150,000.

Stamp of the month archive 10

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The British Guiana 1c magenta is among the rarest of the world's postage stamps, issued in limited numbers in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856. Only one specimen is now known to exist.

An expected delivery of stamps by ship did not arrive in 1856, so the local postmaster, E.T.E. Dalton, authorised a printer, Joseph Baum and William Dallas, of Georgetown, to print an emergency issue of three stamps. Dalton gave some specifications about the design, but the printer chose to add a ship image of his own design on the stamp series. The one copy known to exist is in used condition and has been cut into an octagonal shape. A signature, in accordance to Dalton's policy, can be seen on the left hand side. Although dirty and heavily postmarked on the upper left hand side, it is nonetheless regarded as priceless.

An unsubstantiated rumour developed in the 1920s that a second copy of the stamp had been discovered, and that the then owner of the stamp, Arthur Hind, quietly purchased this second copy and destroyed it.

Stamp of the month archive 11

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The "Treskilling" Yellow, or 3 skilling banco error of color, is a postage stamp of Sweden, and as of 2004 the most valuable stamp in the world. To date no other example has been found, so is most likely the only one in existence.

The 3-skilling banco value of the first postage stamps of Sweden, issued in 1855, was normally printed in a blue-green color, while the 8-skilling was printed in a yellowish orange shade. In 1886, a young collector named Georg Wilhelm Baeckman was going through covers in his grandmother's attic, and came across one with a 3-skilling stamp printed in the yellowish orange shade of the 8-skilling.

Each time it has been sold it has set world records. In 1984 the stamp made headlines when it was sold by David Feldman for 977,500 Swiss francs. A 1990 sale realised over one million US dollars and in 1996 it sold again for 2,500,000 Swiss francs.

Stamp of the month archive 12

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The Benjamin Franklin Z Grill, or simply "Z-Grill", is a 1-cent postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service in February 1868 depicting Benjamin Franklin. The Z-Grill is distinguished by having the so-called "Z" variety of a grill pressed into the stamp, creating tiny indentations in the paper whose purpose was to allow the cancelling ink to be absorbed better by the stamp's paper. The use of grills was found to be impractical and they were soon discontinued.

The 1-cent Z-Grill is generally considered the rarest and most valuable of all US postage stamps. There are currently only two known 1-cent 1868 Z-Grills, both with cancellation marks.

Stamp of the month archive 13

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The Mauritius "Post Office" postage stamps, issued in September 1847, are among the rarest in the world, and are of legendary status in the world of philately.

The engraved stamp designs were based on the then current issue of Great Britain stamps (first released in 1841), bearing the profile head of Queen Victoria and issued in two denominations in similar colours: one penny red brown and Two pence blue.

Five hundred of each value were printed from a single plate bearing both values and issued on September 21, 1847, many of which were used on invitations sent out by the wife of the Governor of Mauritius for a ball she was holding that weekend. The words "Post Office" appear in the left panel, but on the following issue in 1848, these words were replaced by "Post Paid." A legend arose later that the words "Post Office" had been an error.

The stamps are highly prized by collectors because of their rarity, their early dates and their primitive character as local products. Surviving stamps are mainly in the hands of private collectors but some are on public display in the British Library in London, including the envelope of an original invitation to the Governor's ball complete with stamp. Another place where they can be seen is at the Blue Penny Museum in Mauritius. The two stamps also can be seen at the Museum for Communication (Museum für Kommunikation) in Berlin and in the Postal Museum of Sweden in Stockholm.

Stamp of the month archive 14

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Epaulettes are the colloquial name of the first series of postage stamp issued by Belgium that depicted King Leopold I and his prominent epaulettes from which the name derives. They were first usable on 1 July 1849 when two values, with the same design were issued: a brown 10 centimes and a blue 20 centimes. Their introduction proved extremely successful and led to a large expansion of the postage system. The Epaulettes were soon superseded by new types.

The brown 10 centimes denomination, could be used to send a letter up to a distance of 30 kilometres (19 mi); the blue 20 centimes could be used on all other ordinary national mail. The stamps depicted Leopold I wearing military uniform, with highly visible epaulettes, and were printed using the Intaglio method. They were inscribed "POSTES" ("post") at the top, along with the stamp's value in numbers. At the bottom was the stamps face value in French language text. No Dutch language version was produced.

Stamp of the month archive 15

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The Rare 2d Coil was an experimental vertical coil stamp, denominated 2d, issued by the Irish Post Office in 1935 and is one of the scarcest, and most valuable, Irish stamps. Because the stamp is the same design as the first Irish definitive stamp, a 2d green stamp issued on 6 December 1922 with the Map of Ireland it appears almost identical, except for the imperforate vertical edges, so philatelists refer to the configuration as '"perf 15 x imperf", or in the USA as "perf 15 horizontal".

It was first recognised in 1937 but not acknowledged by the philatelic catalogues until the Scott catalog listed it in 1952. Over the years 20 copies have been identified in mint condition but the quantity used is unknown, however they are scarce. A few copies are known on cover. The genuineness of this stamp was discussed in the Irish philatelic literature during the mid-1990s but archive documents confirm the stamp were ordered and issued by the Irish postal administration.