50 Fun Facts About Postage Stamps

The United Kingdom, issuer of the first postage stamp, is the only nation whose stamps may leave off what?

The country's name was never needed on the first stamps, which were for home use only, and foreign post offices later agreed Britain could go on omitting it so long as the sovereign's portrait appears.

On the 1918 Inverted Jenny, the most famous error in American stamp printing, what is printed upside down?

An airplane, a Curtiss JN-4 mail biplane, is upside down because each two-colour sheet went through the press twice, and one misprinted pane of 100 slipped out unnoticed.

Whose profile, copied from an 1834 William Wyon cameo, appears on the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive stamp?

Queen Victoria was a 15-year-old princess when William Wyon modelled the head in 1834, and that girlish profile stayed on British stamps until her death in 1901.

Which singer’s 1993 US stamp design was picked by 1.2 million mailed ballots, the young image beating the older one?

Elvis Presley's young likeness took more than 75% of the vote after ballots went out in post offices and in People magazine, and the stamp was unveiled at Graceland on his birthday.

Licking the gum on cheap wedding-invitation envelopes proves fatal for a bride-to-be in a 1996 episode of which sitcom?

Seinfeld's Susan Ross collapses after licking hundreds of envelopes that George had picked for being the cheapest, and the hospital blames their toxic glue.

How did the US Post Office respond in 1962 to a Dag Hammarskjöld stamp printed with yellow inverted?

Reprinted 40 million on purpose so the invert would have no rarity value; the finder, New Jersey jeweler Leonard Sherman, sought an injunction but later donated his sheet to the American Philatelic Society.

How were the earliest stamps of the 1840s, printed in sheets without perforations, separated for sale and use?

Cut apart with scissors until Henry Archer's trials, first with rouletted slits and then with punched holes, led Britain to adopt perforation in 1854.

Which country's 1843 'Bull's Eye' stamps used an abstract design so a postmark would never deface its emperor's face?

Brazil's Bull's Eyes are named for the ornate numerals in oval frames, which look like pairs of eyes on the sheet, and they made it the second country after Britain with stamps valid nationwide.

Which stamp replaced Britain's first adhesive in 1841 after cancellation marks proved hard to see on it?

The Penny Red let clerks cancel in black ink, which showed up and could not be cleaned off as the red marks on the Penny Black had been; it reused the old design and even some of its plates.

Georges Herpin coined which word for stamp collecting in 1864, from Greek roots meaning 'love' and 'exempt from tax'?

Philately replaced timbromanie, roughly 'stamp mania', a name collectors disliked; Herpin said stamps had been collected and studied for six or seven years before his word existed.

Tonga in 1963 and Sierra Leone in 1964 issued the first self-adhesive stamps to solve what problem?

Gum sticking together in humidity ruined lick-and-stick stamps in the tropics, and the peel-off backing brought a bonus: both countries could die-cut stamps into fruit and other odd shapes.

Rowland Hill's 1837 pamphlet Post Office Reform argued for prepaid letters at what flat rate, whatever the distance?

One penny per half ounce, paid by the sender, replaced charges based on distance and the number of sheets; in 1840, the first year of Penny Post, letters sent in the UK more than doubled.

Which Founding Father, who spearheaded repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act, is on US postage more than anyone but Washington?

Benjamin Franklin opposed the Stamp Act but, unable to stop it, misjudged the anger at home and recommended a friend as a stamp distributor before leading its repeal; the first Postmaster General was on one of the first US stamps in 1847.

Which body, founded in 1874 at German postmaster Heinrich von Stephan’s urging, governs international mail?

The Universal Postal Union's founding treaty set one flat rate between members and let each country keep the postage it collected, so a letter no longer needed stamps of every country it crossed.

Which shoe designer paid a then-record $9.48 million at Sotheby's in 2014 for the world's most famous rare stamp?

Stuart Weitzman later pencilled his initials and a tiny stiletto drawing on the back, joining a line of owners' marks; 80% of the proceeds went to a retired Bulgarian wrestler named in John du Pont's will.

The 1994 US Legends of the West sheet was recalled because its Bill Pickett stamp actually portrayed whom?

His brother Ben Pickett appeared in a widely reproduced photo labelled as the bulldogging star; after the recall the USPS sold 150,000 of the error sheets by lottery at face value.

Staff of which US agency found 1979's inverted $1 candle-holder stamps and were ordered to hand them back or be fired?

CIA staffers kept one invert each after selling a block of 85 to dealer Jacques Schiff for a reported $25,000; the agency later demanded those nine stamps back.

Financier Bill Gross swapped an Inverted Jenny plate block in 2005 for which rare stamp, one of only two known?

The 1c Z Grill is named for its 'Z' pattern of tiny indentations, pressed in so cancelling ink soaked in and could not be washed out; the swap completed Gross's 19th-century US collection.

Where did William Robey hide his Inverted Jenny sheet from postal inspectors?

Under his mattress, until Philadelphia dealer Eugene Klein paid $15,000 for a sheet that had cost Robey $24 at a post office counter days earlier.

China's 1968 stamp 'The Whole Country Is Red' was pulled within hours because which territory was left unshaded?

Taiwan was merely outlined because it was under Republic of China control, though the official reason for withdrawal cited missing Spratly and Paracel Islands and mis-drawn borders.

What fairy-tale name do collectors give a label that resembles a stamp but was never issued by a government for postage?

Cinderella, the overlooked stepdaughter, is said to lend her name to labels that collectors ranked beneath real postage: poster stamps, propaganda labels, Christmas seals and bogus issues of made-up 'countries'.

Which feature did Royal Mail add to its everyday stamps, making the old unmarked designs invalid after 31 July 2023?

A barcode now sits beside the royal profile, and Royal Mail let unbarcoded stamps be exchanged for barcoded ones through what it called the 'Stamp Swap Out' scheme.

Bhutan, which also issued rose-scented stamps, put its national anthem on a stamp that could be what?

Played on a record player, the tiny discs of 1973 also carried folk songs and a spoken history of Bhutan, one of a string of novelty issues aimed at collectors abroad.

What is the term for the everyday workhorse stamps a post office keeps on sale for years, as opposed to commemoratives?

Definitives stay on sale so long that small changes of shade, paper and perforation pile up, and collectors hunt the variants of Britain's Machin profile of Elizabeth II, issued from 1967 to 2022.

Which security feature, often a small crown in the paper, can make one of two otherwise identical stamps far rarer?

A watermark was pressed into stamp paper to foil forgers, and collectors treat two otherwise identical stamps with different watermarks as separate issues.

Which British king amassed one of the world’s most valuable stamp collections and led the Royal Philatelic Society?

George V, as Prince of Wales, paid a record £1,450 for a Mauritius two pence blue in 1904; told that 'some damned fool' had spent that on one stamp, he said the fool was him.

Australia’s first stamp as a Commonwealth, the 1913 red 1d Kangaroo and Map, broke with tradition by leaving off what?

The monarch's head was omitted because the Fisher Labor government included republicans who strenuously opposed it, and the design stayed on issue for 38 years.

The UK waited until 1924 to issue a commemorative stamp, when a pair marked which event?

British Empire Exhibition stamps showed a lion and came out twice, in 1924 and again in 1925, as the Wembley exhibition ran for a second season.

The French Second Republic’s first stamps of 1 January 1849 bore the head of which goddess instead of a ruler?

Ceres gave way in 1852 to the head of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, then returned in 1870 for the Third Republic in a slightly different lithographed design.

Mauritius's famous 1847 'Post Office' stamps were engraved by Joseph Barnard, who had reached the island in 1838 how?

As a stowaway, the Portsmouth-born Barnard was thrown off a ship bound for Sydney, and he stayed on the island as an engraver and miniature painter.

Hawaii’s 1851 stamps, printed on tissue-thin pelure paper, take their nickname from which group’s surviving letters?

Missionaries working in the islands sent most of the surviving covers; the fragile paper means 90% of known copies are damaged, and the 2-cent is the rarest with 15 recorded.

The British stamps of 1952 to 1967 were based on whose photographic portrait of the newly acceded Elizabeth II?

Dorothy Wilding's three-quarter portrait proved awkward: designers complained in 1961 that it crowded their commemoratives, and Machin's plain profile replaced it in 1967.

Which engineer, later a champion of standard time zones, designed Canada’s first stamp, the 1851 Threepenny Beaver?

Sandford Fleming, an immigrant engineer still in his twenties, drew a beaver, the animal whose pelts fed the fur trade that pulled Europeans across Canada and made it a national emblem.

Canada's 1898 map stamp inscribed 'XMAS 1898', often called the first Christmas stamp, was actually issued to mark what?

Imperial Penny Postage took effect on Christmas Day 1898, hence the 'XMAS' on a map showing the Empire in red; the first stamps to depict the Nativity came from Hungary in 1943.

Peru's scarlet 5-centavo stamp, often called the earliest commemorative ever, marked 20 years of what?

The country's first railway, from Lima to the port of Callao, opened in 1851, and the stamp's little locomotive appeared half a century before Britain issued a commemorative.

Who produced many of the caricatures that mocked the ornate Mulready letter sheet launched alongside the Penny Black?

Rival stationers saw the government letter sheet as a threat to their livelihood, and the design was so elaborate and misunderstood that it drew widespread ridicule.

Which monarch appeared on only four British stamps, all issued in 1936?

Edward VIII's four stamps came out in September 1936 and stayed on sale for months after he abdicated that December, while his brother's were being designed.

Which stamp catalogue, begun in 1868 by a New York dealer, has a numbering system its publisher claims as copyright?

Scott's numbers use plain figures for regular stamps and letter prefixes such as 'C' for airmail, and the firm once sued the Minkus catalogue's publisher for using them.

From 1868, why did British firms punch tiny holes spelling their initials through their stamps?

To deter employees stealing them: unused stamps could be cashed in at British post offices, so firms punched in 'perfins', perforated initials that only the owner could use.

Which country solved the problem of underpaid letters in 1859 by issuing the first official postage due stamps?

France had them affixed at the delivery office so the shortfall was collected from the recipient; underpaid international mail was later marked with a 'T', and from April 1879 the missing amount was written beside it.

Which country issued the first stamp for an airmail flight in May 1917, by overprinting its special delivery stamps?

Italy's overprints flew on experimental flights a year before the United States printed the first stamp designed for airmail.

The 1845 Basel Dove, the only stamp the Swiss canton ever issued, was the first in the world to be printed how?

In three colours, black, crimson and blue, around a white embossed dove with a letter in its beak; Basel had its own stamp because each Swiss canton then ran its own post.

Which Swiss canton’s ‘4 and 6’ stamps of March 1843 were the world’s second type of stamp, after the Penny Black?

Zürich's two values reflect a canton that still charged by distance: the 4 rappen paid for letters within the city and the 6 for the rest of the canton.

Asia's first adhesive stamps, the 1852 Scinde Dawks of British-run Sindh, were embossed on wafers of what?

Red sealing wax wafers stamped with the East India Company's merchants' mark cracked and crumbled in use, so they were soon replaced by designs embossed straight onto paper.

India's 1854 Four Annas stamp, printed in red and blue, is prized in the version where which element appears upside down?

The central portrait appears upside down because the red frames were printed first, and at least six half-printed sheets went back into the press the wrong way round for the blue heads.

When the new Chinese Imperial Post's first issue failed to arrive from Japan in 1897, what did it overprint instead?

Revenue stamps in red, an idle 3¢ issue held at the Shanghai customs, were overprinted to meet demand, and the 'Small One Dollar' overprint became China's great rarity, one selling for HK$6.9 million in 2013.

The Baden 9 Kreuzer error of 1851, one of Germany's great rarities, was printed on paper of what colour instead of pink?

Green paper was meant for the 6 Kreuzer value, and the printer apparently read a '6' for a '9' when matching plates to sheets.

Arthur Pitney's postage meter company merged in 1920 with a firm run by which maker of post-office cancelling machines?

Walter Bowes, an English emigrant, had supplied stamp-cancelling machines to the US Post Office since 1908; the merged Pitney-Bowes firm's meter then printed postage straight onto mail, with no stamp needed.

Among stamp collectors, an overprint that changes a stamp's face value, as when a currency goes decimal, is called what?

A surcharge raises or lowers a stamp's value when prices change too fast for a new issue; Sierra Leone used them when the Commonwealth went decimal in the 1960s.

For stamp collectors, what does the French term tête-bêche describe on a sheet?

A pair with one copy inverted, 'head-to-tail' in French, can be deliberate or a mechanical error; booklet sheets printed from both sides of a plate yield such pairs where the columns meet.