Postage Stamps Trivia
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50 free Postage Stamps trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
A postage stamp is a tiny receipt that became a collectable, a national symbol and, occasionally, an eight-figure auction lot. The story runs from a 19th-century schoolmaster's pamphlet on prepaid letters through upside-down biplanes, a country that never prints its own name, and a colour misprint so valuable that a court case was fought over six of them that may never have existed. These 50 questions cover the first adhesive stamps and the reform that produced them, the great errors and rarities of the United States, Britain, Sweden, Mauritius and China, how different countries made their debut, and the words collectors use for pairs, labels, grades and marks. Each answer carries a one-line explanation with one more fact worth keeping. Play it if you ever kept an album, set it as a round for a pub or classroom quiz, or print it for the collector in the family.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The United Kingdom, issuer of the first postage stamp, is the only nation whose stamps may leave off what?
The country's name
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.
Q 02On the 1918 Inverted Jenny, the most famous error in American stamp printing, what is printed upside down?
An airplane
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.
Q 03Whose profile, copied from an 1834 William Wyon cameo, appears on the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive stamp?
Queen Victoria
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.
Q 04Which singer’s 1993 US stamp design was picked by 1.2 million mailed ballots, the young image beating the older one?
Elvis Presley
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.
Q 05Licking the gum on cheap wedding-invitation envelopes proves fatal for a bride-to-be in a 1996 episode of which sitcom?
Seinfeld
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.
Q 06How did the US Post Office respond in 1962 to a Dag Hammarskjöld stamp printed with yellow inverted?
Reprinted 40 million on purpose
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.
Q 07How were the earliest stamps of the 1840s, printed in sheets without perforations, separated for sale and use?
Cut apart with scissors
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.
Q 08Which country's 1843 'Bull's Eye' stamps used an abstract design so a postmark would never deface its emperor's face?
Brazil
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.
Q 09Which stamp replaced Britain's first adhesive in 1841 after cancellation marks proved hard to see on it?
Penny Red
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.
Q 10Georges Herpin coined which word for stamp collecting in 1864, from Greek roots meaning 'love' and 'exempt from tax'?
Philately
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.
Q 11Tonga in 1963 and Sierra Leone in 1964 issued the first self-adhesive stamps to solve what problem?
Gum sticking together in humidity
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.
Q 12Rowland Hill's 1837 pamphlet Post Office Reform argued for prepaid letters at what flat rate, whatever the distance?
One penny per half ounce
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.
Q 13Which Founding Father, who spearheaded repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act, is on US postage more than anyone but Washington?
Q 21What fairy-tale name do collectors give a label that resembles a stamp but was never issued by a government for postage?
Cinderella
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'.
Q 22Which feature did Royal Mail add to its everyday stamps, making the old unmarked designs invalid after 31 July 2023?
A barcode
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.
Q 23Bhutan, which also issued rose-scented stamps, put its national anthem on a stamp that could be what?
Benjamin Franklin
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.
Q 14Which body, founded in 1874 at German postmaster Heinrich von Stephan’s urging, governs international mail?
Universal Postal Union
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.
Q 15Which shoe designer paid a then-record $9.48 million at Sotheby's in 2014 for the world's most famous rare stamp?
Stuart Weitzman
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.
Q 16The 1994 US Legends of the West sheet was recalled because its Bill Pickett stamp actually portrayed whom?
His brother Ben
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.
Q 17Staff of which US agency found 1979's inverted $1 candle-holder stamps and were ordered to hand them back or be fired?
CIA
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.
Q 18Financier Bill Gross swapped an Inverted Jenny plate block in 2005 for which rare stamp, one of only two known?
The 1c Z Grill
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.
Q 19Where did William Robey hide his Inverted Jenny sheet from postal inspectors?
Under his mattress
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.
Q 20China's 1968 stamp 'The Whole Country Is Red' was pulled within hours because which territory was left unshaded?
Taiwan
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.
Played on a record player
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.
Q 24What is the term for the everyday workhorse stamps a post office keeps on sale for years, as opposed to commemoratives?
Definitives
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.
Q 25Which security feature, often a small crown in the paper, can make one of two otherwise identical stamps far rarer?
A watermark
A watermark was pressed into stamp paper to foil forgers, and collectors treat two otherwise identical stamps with different watermarks as separate issues.
Q 26Which British king amassed one of the world’s most valuable stamp collections and led the Royal Philatelic Society?
George V
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.
Q 27Australia’s first stamp as a Commonwealth, the 1913 red 1d Kangaroo and Map, broke with tradition by leaving off what?
The monarch's head
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.
Q 28The UK waited until 1924 to issue a commemorative stamp, when a pair marked which event?
British Empire Exhibition
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.
Q 29The French Second Republic’s first stamps of 1 January 1849 bore the head of which goddess instead of a ruler?
Ceres
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.
Q 30Mauritius's famous 1847 'Post Office' stamps were engraved by Joseph Barnard, who had reached the island in 1838 how?
As a stowaway
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.