Penny Red

For your penny reds the most straight forward guide would be one of the Stanley Gibbons catalogues. The GB Concise for example is easily obtainable second hand for a few £ + postage on ebay. You don't need the most up to date version.

Basically 1. the 1st reds were imperforate and from 1841-1844 cancelled with a Maltese cross
2. 1844 the cancels were town NUMBERS
3.The paper was tinged Blue due to reaction with the ink and the paper had a small crown watermark
4.The first perforated versions with blued paper and small crown watermark appear in 1850 but are scarce until 1853 the perforations Gauge 16
5. in 1855 the perf gauge switched to 14
6 But later with new large crown watermark paper some appear gauge 16 again
7. June 1855 we get large crown and perf 14
8 Paper no longer blued from 1856 there are some perf 16 and some perf 14 issues
9 Finally 1858 the stars in the corners are replaced with letters , letters in all 4 corners and tiny plate numbers from 71 to 225 are engraved in the side frames .


That'll get you started till you acquire a catalogue.

GRILLS were impressed on some US stamps at the end of the 19th century , a rectangular pattern of tiny puncture in the centre of the stamp to break the surface so that it was impossible for cheats to clean off the ink of the postmark and used the stamp again. As far as I know they are a unique US phenomenon.

Hi Yes Chris, if @jcb11 sends me a PM with his email address I could send scans of the relevant pages from My Catalogue as a PDF file

Really interesting .   ... thread.. !

I forgot to add about the Penny Red - the 44 is inside a diamond.

Thank you so much. Your posts are so helpful.

Is there a site with the early postmarks?

floradd look HERE  - this should shed more light on the subject than you may be seeking!

vikingeck, just want to tell you how helpful I find your post. I've inherited 7 penny reds, which I really like having in my collection, and this simplifies my research on them. Your info is in such a compact, usable form, so much better than a catalogue in many ways.

Thank you!

My first time to add an image, a penny red. Let's see what happens, I'm not too hopeful.

I am by no means an experts, but here's what a bit of digging through references has found

First, it appears the stamp is either from plate 181 and if so this stamp was issued from 5/26/1875 until 6/21/1879 (possibly 81, but it looks to clearly have 3 digits each side, although it was issued 3/1/1864)

In Brian Smiths work (From London's Postal History, Section E) discusses horizontal diamond cancellations from from 1844 to 1868, and yours appears to be a 4.c,  a 9 bar, 2-5-2 two bars above, five on the side and 2 on the bottom-  although we can't see the bottom portion of your cancelled stamp, most seem to be equal numbers top and bottom). The top of the "4" on the right touched the frame as in Brian Smiths discussion/example, however, he has it listed for only a very short time (January to February 1859) and  I am not sure if this is the actual span of time used or the span for examples identified as 4.c . And i can't find anything with a later reference

I  find 44 associated with North Row, Wimbledon, Portland Street and Manor Park,  but I cannot find dates as to when each office would have used this, but it appears North Row may have only operated until 1856

Another publication found on the Londons Postal History Groups site has Inland Office Cancellations 1844 - 1868 : The Horizontal Diamonds.... but again only covers up to 1868 which would be before your stamp was printed and issued... AND although no author is listed I think it may be the same one as mentioned above

Your stamp also suffers what a great many stamps suffer --- too close of an encounter with scissors, probably when it was cut from the envelope it was affixed to.  

Your image is fine, but I would suggest cropping it so there isn't so much background

Cheers


[ADMIN NOTE: Posts related to image enhancement have been moved into this thread.]

Show me the 181 - my eyes must be ? maybe a close-up scan ? - Thanks !!....btw wav done this before on my stamps and found the # 

René

The engraved plate numbers on Penny Reds only occur in the series with letters in all four corners. Also on similar two pence blue, but not on the earlier series with stars in the upper corners and letters in the lower corners only.

Later GB from Queen Victoria , the so called Surface printed issues , also contain plate numbers in the stamp design , but I do not know of such numbers in stamps from the various other commonwealth territories.

Is it possible that there is no plate number ..?
Thanks in advance to those who can clarify the dilemma.