Antiques: Do come along and have a look round our next stamp sale

He didn’t have many hobbies but his main interest outside of politics was stamp collecting. He collected stamps from Great Britain and also Malta where he spent his school days as his father an officer in the Navy was stationed there. He enjoyed going to local philatelic society meetings to meet fellow enthusiasts and swap stamps. He also enjoyed going to stamp fairs and many specialist auctions.

Sheffield Auction Gallery are holding such an auction on Thursday 16th February. It’s a fantastic sale of over 300 lots many from a local stamp collector who recently died.

One of my favourite lots is a fine positional block of eight King Edward VII stamps which is in mint condition within a broken frame and a pair of Penny Blacks each with a red Maltese cross something I am sure my father would have been keen to buy!

Before adhesive paper stamps were introduced letters were hand stamped or postmarked with ink. Postmarks were inverted by Henry Bishop and were at first called “Bishop Mark” and were introduced in 1661 at the London General Post Office.

Rowland Hill a school master, inventor and social reformer campaigned for a reform of the postal system and invented the first adhesive postage stamp in 1840. He also created the first uniform postage rates based on weight rather than size.

The first stamp was the Penny Black which had Queen Victoria’s profile head. At the time it was normal for the recipient to pay postage on delivery with the charge dependant on distance so the Penny Black allowed a letter of up to half an ounce to be delivered for a flat rate of 1d.

Today stamps have been printed in all sorts of shapes so apart from the common rectangular stamps they can be found in circular, triangular and even pentagons. The USA issued it’s first circular stamp as a hologram of the Earth in 2000 and Sierra Leone has interestingly issued stamps in the shapes of fruit. Apart from the most common paper stamps foil embossed with designs are sometimes also issued.

So do come along and have a look round our next stamp sale which will be on view on Wednesday 15th February 9am-3.30pm.