Penny Red From Plate 75 ?

My great-grandfather saved a box of 300 Penny Red stamps, including 100 that were tied in a little bundle until I cut the thread last week.

I found this one which looks like it has the number 75 on each side, but I've read that there are no known plate 75 Penny Red stamps, so...what am I missing?

This is a scan of the stamp; I can post a photo of it tomorrow.

Looks like 73 on the left side?

Agreed that it looks like Plate 73 on the left, but covered by the cancel.

I see a note in my Scott's that Plate 177 is sometimes altered to appear as Plate 77. Perhaps you have someone altering Plate 175 to look like Plate 75?

But, maybe not. I just happen to have a Plate 73. As you can see, the 73 looks very clean on the left, but the right side almost looks like 79.

This Forum is magical!
I have exactly the same question.

Partime, I can see where the number on the left side of my stamp looks like 73, and that does look a lot like "79" on the right of your stamp; the printing process definitely was a work in progress back then!

I am a complete novice when it comes to comparing details on stamps from different plates, and so this might not be a significant difference; however, the "H" on mine is noticeably closer to the top of the white square than on yours.

Does anyone know when the first forgeries began appearing? I think all of the old stamps in this collection were purchased in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Aurora, the number on yours looks like it could be 72, but I'll defer to others with more experience looking at penny red plates.

Here is a photo of my stamp taken in bright daylight. The stamp is a little bowed, as you can see from the shadow at the top. The scanned version is better, I think, but these might be useful too.

77 is the magic number.

Neither is a potential plate 77.

Just based on what I've read on the Internet, the "magic numbers" include 69, 70, 75, 77, 126, 128 and 225, and there are no known stamps from plate 75.

Thanks for your input, everyone. It's odd that the numbers on each side of the plate look so different, but I have seen a few other Penny Reds with seemingly "mismatched" number pairs on either side, so I guess the plates truly were imperfect works in progress.

77 is very rare and very expensive, and 225 is scarce. The others don't, as far as I know, exist as plates of the 1d red with letters in four corners.

I read that plate numbers 69, 70, 75, 126 and 128 were never used because of the poor quality of the stamps, and very few stamps were produced from numbers 77 and 225. I read somewhere else, however, that trial sheets of stamps must have been produced by 69, 70, 75, 126 and 128 in order to test the plates, and that conceivably some stamps could have been used rather than destroyed.

I would never try to pass it off as something it isn't, but to me the plate number still looks like 75. Someone may have altered the stamp to make it look that way, but if so, it would have been done by the early 1900s. I didn't do it, I swear

If you want a plate 225, you can pick one up on ebay. If you want a plate 77, copies of which seem to have been illicitly passed to the well-connected from the sheet lodged with the British Museum/Library, you'll need several hundred thousand pounds!

Ha ha, funny how those stamps managed to grow legs and walk out of the museum

I read that Plate 77 stamps have sold for 495,000 and 550,000 pounds!

I'm enjoying learning about stamps, but my focus is on organizing my great-grandfather's collection so that I can get it off my dining room table!

"I read that plate numbers 69, 70, 75, 126 and 128 were never used because of the poor quality of the stamps"

This is not strictly true as some plates were rejected because the plates themselves were faulty and were never used to print stamps at any time. Plate 77 would have reached the early printing stages before being rejected hence the appearance of a few stamps.
Plate 225 was used to print around 3 million stamps and that is the reason for the high prices today if you compare it to the 236 million stamps from plate 140 for instance.
In total there were around 13.5 billion stamps printed from plates 71 - 225

Thanks, scotzm.

So far, the majority of the stamps with clearly visible numbers are from plates 110-160. Are stamps from these plates equally common?

To go off on a short tangent...While looking through the stamps, I found this one, which is stamped on back with what I assume is the name of the dealer from which it was purchased. With the exception of a possible "1", I can't read any part of its plate number and don't see anything special about it.

This is a dealer price list - ie above the street value - which will give an indication of relative scarcity

http://www.gbstamps.co.uk/queen_vic...advanced.asp