Call me by your number - 01a Black, red and blue pennies

The first stamp ever, the notorious 'black penny', appeared in 1840.
There were 11 plates (of which the first one had an 'A' and a 'B' version).

It takes a lot of knowledge, to find which stamp belong to which plate.
The difference lays mainly in the use of different font types of the alphabet, but since 'black pennies' are not available in huge quantities, nor are they cheap, it is for most collectors impossible to reconstruct a whole sheet.

Same goes for the later issued red and blue pennies, where plate numbers are visible on both sides of the stamp. Although these stamps are more affordable, cancelled copies are often hiding the plate numbers.

Red penny, plate 16, letters RB

Therefore, I have made a 'basic' album for those who want to collect all letter combinations AA to TL, and another 'basic' album, for those who want to collect all plate number, regardless the corner letters.

full reconstruction of a sheet
source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black_printing_plates

I once had the opportunity to see a full reconstruction of a red penny plate. This was collected throughout many years, by one senior member of our stamp club, Peter.

First downloadable document, is a blank album, for all 240 pennies, with letters in the corners.
The reason for this 'odd' number of 240, lies in the fact that till 1971, the imperial system was used.
1 British pound (£),  was worth 20 shillings, and one shilling was 12 pence.
Hence, each row of 12 black/red pennies, was worth one shilling, and all 20 rows together made the cost of one full sheet 1£.

Plate reconstruction 1 penny

Plate reconstruction 2 pence 

It can be used for black and or red pennies, and also for the blue 2 pence stamps.
Fanatics can print it several times, to compile sheets of each of the different plates...

to be continued....

Call me by your number - 00 b Introduction

From the 'black penny in 1840, till the emission of 1883, plate numbers can be found on the stamps.
Each of the plates had 240 stamps. Most of them were issued on sheets of 20 rows and 12 columns.

An option would have been to 'number' those rows and columns, but letters were chosen instead.
Rows went from A to T, and columns from A to L; resulting in 240 stamps from AA to TL.

The letters to determinate, are the ones on the bottom of the stamp.
Below is a stamp (plate 22) - position K D (not DK !) - so row 11, stamp 4

plate 22 - position KD

One special version of the black penny, is with letters VR by the way.
These do not appear on a 'normal' sheet of 240 (nor does RV), they refer to the Latin Victoria Regina (Queen Victoria) and were used as service (official) stamps. 

Not only one can start looking for all possible plate numbers of one particular issue, (not always mentioned in regular catalogs by the way), but also the different positions of each stamp within the different plates.

For the depicted stamp above, there were 17 plates with a pink 2 1/2d stamp, and 7 plates (17 till 23) with the blue version. A total of 5760 'different' stamps to search for...

to be continued ...

 

Call me by your number - 00 a Introduction

Numbers have always been appealing to people.
But for once, the question is not 'how many stamps do you have'... but which numbers do you have.

Collecting different images on stamps, and later discovering errors in those images, is already a very pleasing activity.
But what if it was made 'simple' ... just collecting the numbers appearing on the stamps.

In the beginning, british stamps were printed on numbered plates. Those numbers were however not printed somewhere at the top or the bottom of that sheet, but on the stamps theirselves.

On US stamp sheets, the plate numbers can be found in the border frame of the sheets.

Plate 170, with the name of the printing company

Only stamps with a certain part of the border paper, will reveil the plate number.
You need to be lucky somehow, to find the different plate numbers, as they are not part of the stamp, and might have been thrown away long time ago.

The british stamps however had their plate numers printed ON the stamp itself.
As there were many prints of the same stamps, over the years, identical looking stamps, had possibly different plate numbers.

a red penny - plate 107

Some plates got distroyed, due to failiures, damage, ... so various plate numbers became more rare than others. 

The perforated red penny, was first printed on plate 69, and ended with plate 225.
Plate 69 and 70 however were rejected (not issued), and also 75, 126 and 128 were destroyed.
3 more plates, 226, 227 and 228 were prepared, but never used.
The most notorious plate, plate 77 was also rejected, but some of the printed stamps did manage to come into circulation. Their value is now sky rocketing.

After the black, red and blue pennies, plate numbers restarted from 1 again.
Some of them are very visible, others are more difficult to find, especially on used stamps.

Other examples :

plate 14

plate 22

plate 14

plate 8

plate 18

 

plate 15

plate 1

plate 2

 

plate 13

 

a difficult one ... plate 13

to be continued...