stamps” />

There are rare and valuable stamps in all postal systems of the world. Two of the best known of these are the Inverted Jenny, which was a printing error and the 1-cent Z grill stamp from the US postal system. Anyone who is a serious stamp collector will tell you that there are five most valuable stamps in the world and all are trying to have them in their collections. However, they are very rare and thus, very expensive. These valuable stamps are:

 

1. The Three -Shilling Banco from Sweden, which is yellow in color, was printed in 1855. This stamp is valuable because the yellow was a mistake in the color of the stamp. The yellow paper that was used in the printing was supposed to be for the 8-shilling stamp. The usual color for the 3-shilling stamp was green. Only one copy of this stamp has ever been found. This was in 1885, when a young Swedish boy was looking through his grandfather’s stamp collection. No other copies of the stamp have surfaced and this rare stamp was sold in 1996 for the stunning price of $2.3 million dollars to an anonymous collector.

stamps” />

Stamps are used by millions of people daily yet few of us give them any thought. We take them for granted, seeing them as mere functional objects. It is true that they are functional objects but not only. Ask any stamp collector and he or she will tell you that a stamp is a lot more than that. In the case of used stamps, a lot of them tell a story and reflect the period and mood of the country in which they were issued.

Let us backtrack for a while and talk about the history of stamps and how they came about. It is commonly accepted that stamps were first introduced in the United Kingdom in 1840 with the penny black stamp. It was a revolution of sorts since it meant that the sender had to pay the postage fee and not the recipient like before. Shortly after the two pence blue stamp was issued. On thing to note is that the United Kingdom is to this day the only country whose name does not appear on its stamps.

As you know, stamp collecting is a very popular hobby throughout the world. Some people prefer to collect brand new stamps while others prefer to collect used stamps that actually served their purpose. Some of course do not discriminate and collect both. There are a lot of different types of stamps. Some stamps are issued for collecting rather than postal use. Let us have a quick look at the type of stamps available and their characteristics.