From 1847 to 1854 somewhere in Somerset House stood men patiently stamping repeating images onto sheets of paper.
This was the short-lived experiment in embossed postage stamps in Great Britain.
And, like anything short-lived, it’s a great area for collectors.
First, the limited supply offers potentially rarity.
The peculiar production method introduces a high variation in quality that puts an even higher premium on the best examples.
An inverted watermark adds extra value to this excellent example of a pair of 6D embossed stamps.
And, those good examples are exceptionally attractive and interesting.
Why were embossed stamps introduced?
The introduction of the Penny Black in 1840 was a marvel of the age of mass production.
Embossing takes stamps back into the hand-crafted age that machines consigned to history.
Stamps were literally stamped with an embossing press, one-by-one, onto their sheets.
Why?
These were premium products, introduced to pay for overseas letters and registered domestic post.
Embossing added a textural element to the design too.
Fear of forgery has been one of the abiding driving forces in stamp design, and anything that made stamps more complex made them harder to forge.
What value did the GB embossed stamps have
The embossed stamps were limited in use and only three values were ever printed.
From September 11, 1847, a 1 shilling green stamp. This would cover postage to the US.
From November 6, 1848 a 10d brown stamp, enough to pay for a letter to Europe.
From March 1, 1854, a 6d in mauve/purple or lilac would pay to post to Belgium.
Before that green shilling stamp was issued, no British stamp had had a face value over 2d.
It’s notoriously difficult to compare historical monetary values.
But, using an historical diary of wages we can find a labourer in 1850 earning between 7 and 8 shillings a week.
So, a shilling isn’t an inconsequential amount of money in the mid-19th century.
What did the GB embossed stamps look like
Embossing is rarely used even in the most rarefied printing.
The design was an eight-sided image (though the sides aren’t all straight), with a border containing an image of Queen Victoria, recognisably the Young Head used on all line-engraved stamps too.
William Wyon made the master die.
Hand embossing the stamps has put a premium on good margins for collectors.
The first one produced didn’t show the curl at the back of Victoria’s hair.
The Royal Mint used this die on coins, but new dies were made for each value of stamp with the curl added. The difference in each curl is an observable difference on the stamps.
Wyon also made two of the working dies (in fact, he virtually designed the whole stamp).
Details on the queen’s portrait are raised above the ground of the image by varying amounts.
The vertical dimension makes the design of these stamps more similar to coin portraits.
Hidden details of GB embossed stamps
The paper used in the embossed issues was special.
The 6d stamps have watermarked paper. Each individual stamp should have a complete VR (widely spaced capital letters, sans serif) watermark on it.
The other values have no watermarks, but have silk threads running through the paper, which was made by Dickinson, from Hertfordshire. Each stamp should contain two threads at 5mm distance, but the spacing can differ from sheet to sheet. The 6d stamps are not on threaded paper.
You can see from the illustrations on this page that the colours have quite a variation in the GB embossed issues.
Early embossed stamps have colourless gum. However, after a sheet was stamped on the wrong side in error, tinted gum was introduced on the 6d stamp (the other values could be correctly placed with the threads through the paper).
The die numbers are shown in the stamp but can be hard to spot. They should be at the base of the Queen’s portrait after William Wyon’s “WW” signature.
There are six dies. Two were used for the green stamps. The other four dies were used for the brown and purple stamps.
The end of GB embossed stamps
In 1854 the production of embossed stamps was ended.
In 1855 the 10d stamp was withdrawn. The other two values lasted another year, and from 1856, new surface-printed stamps were used for all postage, both domestic and international.
Collecting GB embossed stamps
The first thing to note about GB embossed stamps for the collector is that they are the product of the human hand.
That makes them extremely variable.
There are a number of shade differences for each colour noted in catalogues. The 6d has the widest variation and may be described as lilac, purple, mauve, violet….
The impressions, being made one-by-one, were often misaligned and sometimes collide.
This makes good condition - as in production condition rather than preservation - extremely important in the value of GB embossed stamps.
Margins are particularly important.
The issues were all imperforate.
They had to be cut from a sheet to be used.
Some postal staff cut them out in squares. Others cut around the octagonal shape of the design.
Early collectors often cut around the design too, leaving mint condition impressions robbed of the vital margins.
Good impressions and good margins can add a lot of value to any GB embossed stamp.
The margins here add value to what is already a superlative pair of stamps.
Some cut stamps are remounted or repaired in order to - whether with the intention to mislead or not - give the impression of a square cut.
Buy rare embossed GB stamps now
Paul Fraser Collectibles has one of the largest collections of rare and valuable historic stamps for sale in the world.
You can see some of our GB embossed stamps here.
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