Great Britain 1877 £5 Telegraphs Plate 1 Specimen, SGL237var.
An exceptionally fine and fresh unused, with original gum, left hand marginal example lettered 'AJ', overprinted “SPECIMEN” type 9.
A very scarce Specimen example of the £5 Orange Telegraphs in such exceptional quality.
Specimens were used for various official purposes and were not available for postal use.
The Telegraph system in Great Britain was originally operated by private companies, some of which issued their own stamps.
In 1870, the Post Office took over this service. They initially produced telegraph forms with impressed 1 shilling stationery dies and blank forms to which postage stamps would be affixed.
The need to separate the accounting of revenues from postal and telegraph services led to the introduction of special Post Office Telegraph stamps. They were first issued on 1 February 1876. From 1 May 1876 the use of postage stamps to pre-pay telegraph services was prohibited.
The Telegraph stamps were, however, only in use for five years when it was decided to withdraw them and postage stamps were, once again, used for telegraph services.
The printing plate used for the £5 Orange Telegraphs was subsequently altered by removing "TELEGRAPHS" and substituting "POSTAGE" and was used for printing the £5 Postage stamp of 1882.
Due to its value, their was little need or use of the £5 denomination stamp for normal postage.
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