Corner letters

colour trial (no corner letters)	penny black May 1840 corner letters JF

Corner letters

Corner letters: The stamps were printed in sheets of 240 (20x12) and the stamps had corner letters (botton left and right of the stamp) corresponding to its position on the plate. Starting with AA, AB, AC...to AL for the top row, the second row goes from BA to BL and the twentieth row from TA to TL. There were 240 pence to the pound and 12 pence to the shilling, and therefore 20 shillings to the pound. Thus a sheet of 240 stamps would cost £1, half a sheet of 120 stamps would cost ten shillings, one row of 12 stamps cost a shilling (i.e. 12 pence). Four different alphabets were used in the course of time to form the corner letters. The penny black had two corner letters, JF is shown below as well as its position on the sheet.

One way of collecting stamps is to reconstruct a sheet by obtaining all 240 possible corner letters.

The stamps were initially not perforated, but had to be cut with scissors, perforations were introduced in 1854. Each stamp had its own 'small crown' watermark. Due to wear eleven different plates were used to print the Penny Black.

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