Great Britain 1865 9d Straw PIate 5 (Watermark Emblems), SG98var.
A superb unused, with original gum, imperforate imprimatur lettered 'AJ'.
A very rare "Abnormal" stamp and one of only 21 possible examples many of which are in institutional collections
Accompanied with a 1954 British Philatelic Association (BPA) Certificate of Authenticity.
Provenance: Ex. Silkin (1971) Dr Serval (1976).
The History of this "Abnormal" Rarity
In 1865 the design of the 9d stamp from the 1865-67 surface printed issue was altered, and a new plate – plate four – was registered on 27 Feb 1865.
Another backup plate was later registered on 24th April 1866, but it was never put into service.
As standard, an imprimatur sheet was printed using this new plate five. It was also policy to print a further five perforated sheets from a new registered plate. But no evidence that these sheets survived has ever been found.
This left just a single sheet of 240 stamps from plate 5.
Stamps AA, AI-AL, BK, BL, SI-SL, and TA-TL were removed imperforate.
This stamp with the initials 'AJ" is one of those small number.
And the rest of the sheet was hidden away in the GPO archives.
But in 1890 a set of 'memento' booklets was produced as gifts for members of the GPO Stamp Committee, which sat from 1884 to 1887.
These booklets included three sets of stamps, dating from before and after the work of the committee.
It was imaginatively titled 'Before and After the Stamp Committee'.
To honour the Committee members, they decided that the 1865 9d on page 1 should be the rarest of them all - the 'abnormal' plate 5.
So a further 36 9d stamps were cut from the plate 5 imprimatur sheet, and then perforated by De La Rue to give them the appearance of genuine issued stamps.
(The fact that they didn't use stamps from the other five perforated sheets suggests that these had in fact been destroyed prior to 1890.)
Two of these stamps, soaked from the pages of their booklets, have since appeared in the Royal Philatelic Collection.
And their illustrious history has only added to the reputation of the 1865 9d straw plate 5 as one of the greatest Victorian surface-printed rarities. |
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