Great Britain 1993 £10 Britannia, SG1658.
A superb unmounted mint example with full original gum.
The paper used for the £10 Britannia stamps contains fluorescent coloured fibres which, together with the ink used on the shield, react under U.V. light.
The £10 Britannia is one of the finest modern stamp issues from Great Britain and the UK's highest value ever stamp. It was introduced on 2nd March 1993, replacing the £5 stamp as the UK’s highest-value stamp.
The higher value was required because of a need for a stamp to cover the cost of postage for heavy packages going by air.
It was phased out after just a few years and has become increasingly hard to acquire because they are so popular and held in private collections.
It is also known as Britain’s most secure stamp ever released as it employs an array of state of the art printing techniques to protect it against forgery:
- The stamp is the only definitive stamp ever to incorporate Braille embossed dots – not so much help to the blind or partially sighted to identify the stamp but as a further deterrent to the would-be counterfeiter.
- Furthermore, the £10 Britannia consisted of the two pairs of elliptical holes at the top and bottom. Previously this curious feature had been confined to savings, television, national insurance and telephone stamps. After the £10 stamp it became the normal for the Machin definitives as well.
