Postage stamp is a postage voucher issued by the postal agency and used for mail delivery. Stamps are a form of proof that the sender of the mail has paid for the postal service. The sender affixes the stamp to the letter, and then the post office stamps and sells it. This is used to prove that the sender has paid the fee before the mail is sent. The issuance of stamps is managed by the country or region and is a symbol of the sovereignty of a country or region. The small space of stamps often reflects the history, technology, economy, culture, customs, natural features and other characteristics of a country or region, which makes stamps have collection value in addition to their postal value. Stamps are also an important source of revenue for some countries or regions. The hobby of collecting stamps is called philately. The earliest stamp in the world was the Penny Black invented by British Sir Rowland Hill, and the earliest stamp in China was the Dalong stamp of the Qing Dynasty.
Things are rare and valuable, and some stamps are highly sought after by collectors because of their small quantity. There is no most precious or rare stamp in the world, as there are many unique stamps in existence. The most famous of them are as follows:
Penny Black (British - 1840)
The world's first postage stamp. The "Penny Postal Act" of Sir Rowland Hill, the father of stamps, triggered an important revolution in world postal services and also led to the birth of the queen of postage stamps in the world, "Penny Black". On August 17, 1839, the British Parliament passed the 1 penny postage law and the prepaid postage system to implement a uniform postage system. From September 6 to October 15, we publicly solicited opinions and design drawings on the postage vouchers paid, but none of the more than 2,500 pieces of feedback received was satisfactory. In this way, Hill made further design changes based on feedback, and worked together with designers, sculptors and other relevant personnel to finally create the world's first stamp, the Penny Black.
Mauritius "Post Office" stamps (Mauritius - 1847)
In September 1847, the wife of the Governor of Mauritius held a ball. In order to mail invitations, the local post office issued two stamps with different face values. They are orange 1 penny and blue 2 pence, with the pattern of the profile of Queen Victoria of England, 500 pieces each. This is the earliest stamp issued by the British colonies. The stamp was engraved by a clockmaker named Joseph Badner, who printed "post paid" instead of "post office" because it was his first time doing it and he had extremely poor eyesight. But no one noticed the error at the time. After the ball, most of the invitations were thrown away, and only a dozen stamps were shipped to Europe and India on a liner. It was not until 1869 that the error in this stamp was discovered. Only one actual envelope has been found so far, and it was auctioned for US$5 million in 1993. There are 15 new 1p stamps in existence and 12 new 2p stamps in existence. All are world treasures.
Saxony Crimson Variant Stamp (Saxony - 1850)
After Saxony joined the German-Austrian Postal Union in 1850, it issued the first set of toothless stamps with a face value of 3 pfennigs. , Toppan printing, 500,000 pieces were printed, 463,058 were actually sold, and the rest were destroyed. These stamps were specially used to send magazines, newspapers and other printed matter. Most of them were discarded after taking out the mail, so they are rare in existence. The wrong color variant tickets are even rarer. A used wrong-color variant ticket Sifanglian was auctioned on March 14, 1987 for 500,000 marks.
Missionary Stamps (Hawaii - 1850)
Hawaii issued its first set of stamps in 1851, with denominations of 2 cents, 5 cents and 13 cents. Because the postmaster at that time was the son of a missionary, and most of the letters with such stamps were missionaries, it was named "missionary stamps". The current auction price of the new ticket is 35,000 US dollars for 2 cents; 35,000 US dollars for 5 cents; and 175,000 US dollars for 13 cents.
3 Skilling Bunko wrong color stamp (Sweden - 1855)
This stamp was issued in 1855 because the printer mistakenly placed the 3 Skilling Bunko sub-die in the wrong place. In the printing plate of the 8 shilling stamp, the originally green stamp was printed yellow. In 1894, the postal king Ferrari bought it for 400 pounds. In 1922 it was sold for ￡694. It was bought by the King of Romania in 1937 for 5,000 pounds. It was sold at auction in 1996 for US$2.27 million, making it the most expensive stamp in the world to date.
British Guiana One Cent Magenta (Guyana - 1856)
At the beginning of 1856, there was a shortage of local stamps in British Guiana, and newly printed ones had not yet been delivered from Britain, so they had to A small amount of magenta 1-cent and blue 4-cent stamps were printed at the local newspaper printing plant. The stamps are printed very crudely. Among them, the magenta one-cent stamp is mainly used to affix news newspapers, so it is very rare. In 1922, American philatelist Hind bought it for a high price of US$32,148. After Hind's death, the stamp changed hands several times. In 1980, the stamp was auctioned for US$935,000, making it the second most expensive stamp in the world to date.
The center of the "Qian Five Hundred Wen" reverse-printed dragon stamp: (Japan - 1871)
In 1953, it was acquired by an American stamp collector named J.C. Linsley I bought it in a stamp album, and the central text of the green dragon stamp "Qian 500 Wen" was printed upside down. It was bought by a Japanese stamp collector in 1973 for US$75,000. Only one has been discovered so far.
The small red printed characters serve as one-yuan stamps (Manchu Qing Dynasty - 1897)
On February 20, 1897, the Qing Post Office was officially established, and the postage measurement unit was changed to the silver dollar system. However, The stamps outsourced for printing failed to arrive in time, so the post office used unused 3-cent dividend tax stamps in stock at Shanghai Customs to stamp them into one-dollar stamps and five-dollar stamps for temporary use. However, the post office did not stamp the first batch of one-dollar stamps because they thought the characters were too small, but a small amount still leaked out. At present, only 32 red-printed small one-dollar stamps have been found in existence. There is only one old small one-yuan stamp. It was purchased by philatelist Ma Renquan for US$1,000 in 1944. After the founding of New China, it was donated to the China Stamp Museum in July 1956.
Gongmen reverse printing stamp (Republic of China - 1915)
The old Beijing sailing ship ordinary stamps issued by China Post in 1915, among which "yuan" is the face value of the main image The stamp uses the Imperial Academy Memorial Arch in Beijing as the main image, and is commonly known as the "Palace Ticket". When printing some stamps with a face value of 2 yuan, the overprinted paper was turned upside down, causing the palace gate pattern in the picture to be reversed, so it was called "Palace Gate Inverted Stamp". Known as the first of the "Four Treasures of the Republic of China", there are currently only 50 pieces in existence. It was sold at an auction in Beijing on May 20, 1996 for 380,000 yuan.
Inverted Jane (United States - 1918)
Inverted Jane, commonly known as "The Upside Down", was released in the United States in 1918. Due to a printing error, the image of the "Curtis Jenny 4" aircraft in the stamp is upside down. It is estimated that there are about 100 such incorrect stamps in existence. The inversion in printing makes the stamp highly valuable; in 2006, an "Inverted Jenny" was worth approximately $500,000.
Blue Army Post (the People's Republic of China - 1953)
In 1953, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of China and the Department of Communications of the Military Commission jointly decided to issue a set of military stamps, divided into three pieces, with patterns They are the same, with the same face value, and the shading colors are orange, brown and blue respectively. In the philatelic community, they are commonly known as "Red Army Post", "Yellow Army Post" and "Blue Army Post". The printing volumes of the three types of stamps are 42.5 million; 32.5 million; and 32.5 million respectively. It was originally planned to be issued for use in September 1953. However, during the issuance process, it was discovered that the unit number could easily be leaked without the mailbox code, and the target of use was difficult to control. So we finally decided to stop it. At that time, some yellow army mail had been issued, while blue army mail was only printed on August 24, so very little was leaked out, making it a rare commodity. In August 1999, a Blue Army Sifang Company was auctioned for 3.74 million yuan.
The country's mountains and rivers were ablaze (the People's Republic of China - 1968)
During the Cultural Revolution, in order to celebrate the founding of all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions of the People's Republic of China, The Revolutionary Committee issued 30 million stamps on November 25, 1968, but before the issuance, the Beijing Post Office had sold more than 500 stamps in advance. Because the China border line on the stamp was inaccurate and Taiwan was painted in white, an editor from the Map Publishing House reported it. Subsequently, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications urgently announced that it would suspend sales and would no longer issue it in the future. All stamps would be destroyed. In addition, there is a sample ticket that reads "The mountains and rivers of the country are all red", which has not been officially printed. The China Stamp Expo held in Guangzhou on October 1, 1997 exhibited for the first time a brand-new 50 full-page stamps with the theme "All the Mountains and Rivers Are Red". This edition can be called a "national treasure" with a market price of 10 million yuan ( RMB) and above. On October 31, 2009, at the 2009 Autumn Stamp Auction held by Hong Kong's Bujohn Stamp Auction Co., Ltd., a large-scale "All Mountains and Rivers Are Red" broke the world record for the highest auction price of a single Chinese stamp for HK$3.68 million.
Errors
There are many stamps in the world with errors, some of which are due to printing errors, and some are due to the negligence of the designer, which leads to fallacies in the content of the stamps. The former will usually double the value of the stamp, and many rare stamps in the world come from this. The latter is not uncommon either.
In a set of Columbus stamps issued by Chile at the end of the 19th century, Columbus had a beard.
In 1937, the French Post issued a set of stamps to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Descartes's founding of analytic geometry. The main picture of the stamps
The mountains and rivers across the country are red
It is the flute Portrait of Karl and his famous book "On Method". There is an error in the French name of the book on the stamp.
In 1951, Poland issued a set of stamps commemorating the Paris Commune, which mistakenly identified the portrait of composer Henrik Dombrowski as that of military strategist Dombrowski Yaroslav. On the stamps, the error was not corrected until 1962.
In 1956, in a set of stamps issued by East Germany to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of musician Schumann, Schubert's score was mistakenly used on the stamps as Schumann's score.
On the "Founding Ceremony" stamps issued by China in 1959, the Tiananmen Gate Tower was missing a colonnade.
The Nanchang Bayi Building in the 88th "40th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China" stamp issued by China in 1961 was drawn as three floors, but it should actually be four floors.
The outline of the map of China on the Cultural Revolution stamp "The Mountains and Rivers Are Red" issued by China in 1968 was wrong
(see picture).
In 1972, Cuba issued a set of maritime history stamps. One of the stamps showed the Soviet icebreaker Lenin sailing in the Arctic waters. Penguins appeared in the background.