Newbie Question About Quantity Printed

New to stamp collecting and can't find an answer to this question. When print quantity says 50 million, does that mean individual stamps? So, if the stamps are sold in 20 stamp sheets then only 2.5 million sheets were printed? Thanks for the help!

Yes, individual stamps.

Yes.

Numbers sound small when they are used in an offhand manner. If you have to work with actual quantities, then the numbers become more meaningful.

Stamps have usually been printed in sheets of 100 or even 200. Countries have kept careful track of how many they printed, but some also how many they fouled up and had to destroy. Also in many cases how many were printed and how many were actually sold. Stanley Gibbons has a 42 page book entitled 'Great Britain Numbers Issued 1840 - 1910'. I have a free download of it that is an interesting read. 8453 sheets of the famous Penny Black were 'spoilt' and tossed out. Imagine seeing those now...

Casey:Where does one get the download You refer to?

Link to download of Mr Hyde's GB book

http://www.gbps.org.uk/information/...20(2008).pdf