GB 1840 Penny Black and Two Penny Blue

• Date of Issue : 6th May 1840
• Watermark : Small Crown

KL Plate 5

OF Plate 1

The world's first official postage stamp.

Penny Black Plating

The Penny Black was printed using 11 plates. Plate 1 went under repair due to extensive wear and collectors commonly refer to the plates as plate 1a and 1b.

Penny Black stamps were printed in sheets of 240. There were 12 stamps to a row (the number of pennies to a shilling). There were 20 rows on each sheet (the number of shillings in a pound). Each sheet of Penny Blacks was worth one pound. Check letters were introduced to prevent forgery. Each row had a different letter in the lower left hand corner. The letter along the row stayed the same. Each column had its own check letter in the lower right hand corner that stayed the same.

When the printing plates were produced the lower squares were blank, and the letters were punched in by hand into the printing plate. The corner letters of stamps were hand punched up until 1864. These stamps all have letters in the 2 bottom corner squares only. The upper corner squares contain stars. After 1864, line engraved issues had letters in all 4 corner squares and these letters were engraved rather than being hand punched. More significantly, they also had the plate numbers engraved onto the stamp, making the process of identifying a plate much simpler.

Stamps of the World has created a page for each check letter showing the 12 different plates and can be found at Penny Black Plating.

• Penny Black Plates : 1a, 1b, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
• Penny Blue Plates : 1, 2.

Printing presses

Penny Black stamps were printed by Perkins, Bacon and Petch. The actual presses used were very old dating from 1819 having been built by an American from Boston, called Joseph Perkins. However, they were efficient and continued producing British stamps until 1870. Stamps for the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Trinidad and Western Australia were also printed on these presses.

Shades

• Penny Black : Intense Black, Black, Grey Black.
• Penny Blue : Deep Blue, Blue, Pale Blue.