My Penny Red For Evaluation

Hello ,

can you help me to evaluate my Penny Red stamps and tell how much money they can worth.

thank you
Ric

These stamps are very, very common, and can be picked up for pennies.

Yes, these are extremely common and very cheap.

That, however, makes them fun to accumulate in large quantities, and organize by plate number, and position.

So, they make great crossword-puzzle pieces, metaphorically.

thank you guys

They're also excellent for postmark studies too

Actually, don't be too quick to dismiss these as totally worthless, because they are of the earlier design: A1 in Scott, with the check letters only in the lower corners, rather than the later design, A10 which have the letters in all four corners, and the plate number in the scroll work at the sides. Depending on watermark, paper color and perforation, Scott lists them at anything from $11.50 to $110.00. They look like they might be perf 14, so $11.50, $21.00 or $80.00. Gibbons lists the perf 14 at 40 pounds, 70 pounds or 90 pounds depending on watermark, so nothing to sneeze at, they are, however not very well centered, especially the lower one, where you can barely read the letter in the lower right corner.

You're definitely correct to differentiate between different types of Penny Red. There are the early imperfs ones, and as you say, some with four letters in the corners, which have plate numbers in the margins - one of these (plate 77) is a highy prized and very valuable stamp.

These ones, however, are not in that category. Nonetheless, they could be examined for varieties of the type mentioned. The owner shouldn't get their hopes up - by definition they are probably not the rarer ones. And if a cat value of $100 is found, that translates into probably $20 in the market, for a perfect example. Given the bad centring and other possible faults (both look like they've lost some perfs) we're down to a few dollars - at the most optimistic reckoning.

I agree with txstamp - they are fun to collect. You can amass many of them relatively cheaply - they look good, and you can study shades, postmarks and corner letters (some people hunt down ones with their own initials in the corners). It's not worth getting too interested in monetary worth for this type of Penny Red.