Penny Black..which Plates?

Hi.. I know very little about British stamps and would not know where to start when it comes to plate numbers. My mother (bless her) keeps turning up with stamps my father had collected over the years. These are some of the most recent she has turned up with. As you can imagine I am delighted with her latest find :) Can anyone out there help me identify these.. as in 1 or 1a and plate numbers. Thanks in advance

Hi: Here is a nice link to the plating. Try it out; it's fun finding...
http://philatelics.org/~allan/shrop...s/page1.html
http://www.johnlamonby.com/archive....owarticle=07
http://www.all-originals.co.uk/1840...nyblack.html

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately it seems I will need the books they suggest.. I am trying to concentrate on stamps from the USA, and that itself seems to take up most of my time. But thank you very much anyway- I will see what I can find out through these links. Meantime, if anyone thinks can identify then please feel free to express an opinion. :)

No, you do not need books.

What you first need to do is get scans of each of these stamps, individually. The scans ought to be at 800dpi.

Then go to this website https://www.spink.com/nissen-reconstructions.aspx and look up the images for each of the letter combinations you have and find the best match with regard to the placement of each of the check letters within each of the lower corner boxes. That is, high, low, towards the left, towards the right placement, if a letter is slanted or otherwise aligned.

After you have the best match, if you care to, post the image of your stamp and your view as to the plate and I and others would be happy to look at it and give you feedback.

You do not need to buy any books and invest in any thing other than a scanner.

If you are really lost, then just post the image of your stamp, again scanned and not photographed and you will probably get feedback. (The reason a scan is needed, is that you are looking for small issues wrt check letter alignment and photographs are not from a flat plane and introduce too many mis-alignments and make the process too difficult and prone to error.)

Good luck,

Larry

Hi and thanks. Ok, it is becoming painfully obvious to me that I need a scanner. I know nothing about scanners and am not very tec. minded or talented. It scares me to be honest- the internet is about as tec. as I have gone in the last few years.. So, I will try to do that and get back to you all.

Most cheap inkjet printers come with a scanning function - nothing sophisticated!

Decrynne- understanding that your images are not very good and that the stamps are neither flat nor parallel with the film plane, it is hard to be certain with regard to the plates of your stamps, so I would describe my identification as being close to a guess, but I'd guess that JJ is 5, DE 9, JK is 6 and RG is 9. If anyone disagrees, I'll agree with them. IOW, I won't defend my guesses.

I suspect that your next question is with regard to value and all these are in rough shape and I do not think you've hit the a goldmine, if you catch my drift. If you decide to throw these up on ebay, I'd suggest you keep your day job.

Ha. Thanks Idhaber. Thanks very much for your opinion (guess work). Of course we would all like to hit the goldmine but no fear, I was out working tonight and will be tomorrow too :)

Hi, I would love to know the plate numbers for my penny blacks, all comments are appreciated. Thank you

If you are presenting the stamps in the same order each time, the OG-stamp appears to be plate 1a. Unfortunately, the 10 o'clock ray of the left star is not visible. The greyish colour would be indicative of the plate wear that is common to plate 1a.

The low F and tilted A with strong serif at the lower right leg suggests plate 2. The short 7 o'clock ray flaw appears in all but FF-JL, in CI-FE the 10 o'clock ray is complete, whereas it is not in the other stamps. This fits. Plate 5 (based on the letters) is out because the top frame of the right star is quite strong. The lack of a "tail" to the "O" of one rules out plate 7 (a remote maybe based on the low F, but the base of the left leg of the "A" is lower than that of the right leg). Plates 8 and 9 also have the flaw to the "O."


I agree with Bobby (see below) on the third stamp. The letters, the missing ten o'clock ray and broken 7 o'clock ray.

The PH looks like a plate 2 to me.

Thank you very much, I really appreciate the info.