Penny Black Stamp Value: What a Real One Is Worth

A used Penny Black in ordinary condition is a £15 to £150 stamp, not a life-changing find. The UK auctioneer Warwick & Warwick puts poor to reasonable examples at £15–£30, better ones at £40–£150, and genuinely fine used copies with four clear margins at £250–£400. Unused examples start around £1,250 and climb from there; exceptional unused stamps and multiples reach five and six figures.

The reason is simple arithmetic. About 68,808,000 Penny Blacks were printed from 286,700 sheets during a print run of less than a year, and roughly 1.3 million are thought to survive. Being the world's first adhesive postage stamp makes it the most famous stamp there is; it does not make it rare.

What moves a Penny Black up that range is margins, colour, the cancellation and the plate. The stamp was issued imperforate, so every example was cut from the sheet by hand with scissors. Four even margins with visible white space on all sides are uncommon, and they are worth several times what a copy cut into the design is worth.

Every Penny Black carries two letters in the bottom corners. Sheets held 240 stamps in twenty rows of twelve, and the letters give the position: A A at the top left, running through to T L at the bottom right. The letters were punched into each plate by hand, so their exact shape and placement differ from plate to plate.

Eleven plates were used, with plate 1 so heavily reworked after wear that collectors treat it as two states, 1a and 1b. Plate 11 is the scarce one: it was prepared as the changeover to the Penny Red began and produced only about 168,000 stamps in black, against millions from the early plates.

Working out which plate a stamp came from is called plating, and it is done by comparing the corner letters, guide lines, ray flaws and other plate marks against reference illustrations. It matters because the plate can change the value by a large multiple — and because a seller quoting a plate number without evidence is worth questioning.

The Penny Black went on sale on 1 May 1840 and became valid for postage on 6 May. It was printed by Perkins Bacon from an engraving by Charles Heath and his son Frederick, worked up by Henry Corbould from William Wyon's 1834 medal portrait of the young Queen Victoria.

The problem appeared almost immediately. Stamps were cancelled with a Maltese Cross handstamp in red ink, and red on black is hard to see. Worse, the red ink lifted off the black surface easily, so a used stamp could be cleaned and posted again. In February 1841 the Treasury switched to the Penny Red with a black cancellation, which solved both problems at once.

That is why the Penny Black is a one-year stamp and the Penny Red ran for decades. It is also why a Penny Black with a clear, well-struck red Maltese Cross — especially in an unusual colour such as black or blue — sells for more than one with a heavy smudge across the Queen's face.

Because the Penny Black is famous, it attracts three kinds of trouble.

• Repaired margins. A stamp cut into the design can have paper added to fake a margin. Held to the light, the repaired area shows a different thickness; under magnification the paper fibres do not run continuously.
• Cleaned and re-gummed copies. A used stamp with the cancellation chemically lifted and fresh gum applied is sold as unused. Look for a flat, over-even gum surface and any trace of ink in the paper fibres.
• Penny Reds sold as Blacks. Some Penny Reds from plate 11 came from the same plates. Colour alone is not a safe test on a heavily toned stamp; the cancellation colour and the plate characteristics are.

One genuine premium is worth knowing. Because the stamp was only valid from 6 May 1840, covers dated in the first days of use are collected in their own right, and a Penny Black on cover with a clear early May 1840 date is worth substantially more than the same stamp off paper. That is an argument for never soaking one off its envelope. Our guide to spotting a fake stamp covers the checks in more detail.

Leave it where it is. If it is on an envelope, keep the envelope. If it is hinged into an old album, do not pull it off the page — dry-peeling a hinged stamp is the commonest way people halve the value of one in an afternoon.

Photograph the front and the back, note the two corner letters, and check the margins against the design edge. That is enough information for a dealer or an auctioneer to give you a first opinion. If the answer is that it is an ordinary used example worth £40, that is the normal answer and it is still a genuine 1840 stamp.

Photograph it and the app identifies it, which will confirm the issue before you start counting margins.