Thursday 16 February 2012

As Many Of My Friends Know,

I collect stamps, so this article will have me looking through my collection!

for a plate 77 one penny red, the extremely rare penny red stamp (left) from 'plate 77' is on the same piece of paper as the regular four penny red (right), the perforations did not match up on that particular plate, so all of the test sheets were destroyed, but at least one sheet was released into circulation by mistake - making the 77 every stamp collector’s dream, so if you have any one penny reds in your collection here is what to look for,

this is an unused penny red from my collection, look down the right hand side at just about the bottom of Queen Victoria's hair bun, between the scrolls there is a series of numbers that give the plate number, the number are on both sides but in this example it is easier to see the number on the right hand side,

there is the plate number I have included a part of the hair to make spotting the number easier, in this case plate 167, why all the fuss? dealer Stanley Gibbons heralds it as the 'most valuable single stamp' the company has ever had for sale in their 156 year history, with a value of around £550,000! so only another 3 pages of penny reds to look through, you never know!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have three penny reds with 447 across them and i am sure the small numbers down the side says 145 on one of them, but cannot make out others they are all different in there shades of brick red im not sure what this means but would like some info on them iv had them quite some time passed down through a relative some of the ridges around the outside have errors any advise would be appreciated

PattayaStan said...

Dear Anonymous, the best advice I can give you is to get bin touch with a stamp club/society near you and ask them, failing that send a scan to some one like Stanley Gibbons, https://www.stanleygibbons.com/ and ask for their advice, best regards, Stan and Diana.