Great Britain 1840 'VR Official' Penny Black

A stamp for the government's own letters

Rowland Hill's postal reform of 1840 let anyone send a letter of up to half an ounce anywhere in Britain for one penny, paid in advance with an adhesive stamp. The Penny Black went on sale on May 1, 1840, and became valid on May 6. It was printed by Perkins Bacon in London from a portrait of the young Queen Victoria engraved by Charles Heath and his son Frederick after William Wyon's 1834 medal.

Government departments were to have a stamp of their own. The VR Official was the same design as the Penny Black, printed in the same black on the same watermarked paper, except that the ornaments in the two top corners were replaced by the letters V and R, for Victoria Regina. It was prepared in April 1840 and registered twice, on April 15 and May 9, 1840. Dealers give the printing as 3,323 sheets.

Why it was never issued

The plan died because of the Mulready envelope and letter sheet, prepaid postal stationery introduced alongside the stamps, which the public disliked and mocked. Vast numbers of unsold Mulreadies were handed to government departments to use up, with the tax office the heaviest user. With that stock on hand, the idea of a separate official stamp was dropped.

Nearly all of the supplies were destroyed on January 25, 1843. All but 21 sheets went, which the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum puts at 94 percent of the copies printed. The museum notes that most surviving unused copies had been distributed before the destruction.

Some stamps escaped in other ways. A few passed through the post even though they were never valid, and Rowland Hill used some, including part of a sheet, in experiments on how to cancel stamps so they could not be cleaned and reused.

Cancellation trials and a clever cleanup

The Penny Black's red Maltese cross cancellation turned out to be easy to remove, which let people reuse stamps. That flaw led Britain to switch to the Penny Red, cancelled in black, in February 1841. Before the switch, officials cancelled spare VR Officials and tried to remove the cancels with chemical agents, which is why a number of VR Officials show trial cancellations.

In 2009 a British stamp auctioneer described a VR Official lettered SH, the only listed re-entry of the issue, that a collector had bought as unused. Under close examination it showed small traces of red ink in the lattice below the V and an unusual shiny glaze. He concluded it had been varnished, cancelled in red and cleaned in an official trial, the first known red cancel-removal trial, since such trials had been thought to use only black. He suggested that some 'unused' VR Officials may be trials whose cancels were removed completely.

The stamp has also been forged. Bernhardt Assmus forged it in August 1890 and was exposed by the dealer Morris Giwelb.

Imprimaturs, covers and prices

The most prized examples are imprimaturs, stamps from the official registration sheets that approved the printing. Dealers' counts vary: one listing calls an imprimatur lettered TI 'one of only 33 possible examples,' and another says only 27 are known from the second registration sheet, many of them in institutional collections. One example lettered TC, from the Maurice Burrus collection with a 1980 certificate, sold at £22,500; another lettered TI, with a 2006 certificate, has been offered at £20,000; a third lettered NL has been offered at £48,000.

Ordinary unused examples sell for much less. At a British auction in 2015, a single realized £5,782, a pair £17,110 and a block of four £31,860. A leading British catalog cut its value for the stamp from £35,000 to £20,000 in its November 2020 edition.

A VR Official on cover is the great prize. The 'Largentière' cover, posted in London on July 3, 1840, to Tetbury, Gloucestershire, carries a stamp with four large margins and has been called the finest known. First recorded in 1899, it passed through the Largentière, Maximus, Wills and Shaida collections and was offered by a dealer at £550,000.

How to tell one

A VR Official looks like a Penny Black except for the top corners, which show V and R instead of the usual ornaments. Like the Penny Black it is imperforate, on paper watermarked with a small crown, and carries check letters such as TI, TC or SH that give its position in the sheet.

Because forgeries exist, the examples offered by dealers come with expert certificates, some of them decades old. Signs of a cancellation trial, such as traces of ink or a glazed surface, matter too: an apparently unused stamp may be a cleaned trial.

The numbers

Catalog number

SG V1

Prepared

April 1840; registered April 15 and May 9, 1840; never issued

Printer

Perkins Bacon, London

Quantity printed

3,323 sheets (dealers' figure)

Surviving sheets

21 after the destruction of January 25, 1843

Watermark

Small Crown

Perforation

Imperforate

Size

2.2 x 2 cm (Smithsonian example)

Timeline

1. Apr 1840

   The VR Official is prepared for government mail.

2. Apr 15, 1840

   First registration of the VR Official plate.

3. May 1, 1840

   The Penny Black goes on sale.

4. May 6, 1840

   The Penny Black becomes valid for postage.

5. May 9, 1840

   Second registration of the VR Official.

6. Jul 3, 1840

   A VR Official is used on the 'Largentière' cover from London to Tetbury.

7. Feb 1841

   The Penny Red replaces the Penny Black, partly because red cancels were easy to clean off.

8. Jan 25, 1843

   All but 21 sheets of VR Officials are destroyed.

9. Aug 1890

   Bernhardt Assmus forges the stamp; the dealer Morris Giwelb exposes him.

10. 1899

    The 'Largentière' cover is first recorded.

11. 2009

    A previously unknown red cancel-removal trial on a VR Official is described.

12. 2015

    At a British auction, a single realizes £5,782 and a block of four £31,860.

13. Nov 2020

    A leading catalog lowers its value from £35,000 to £20,000.

The world in 1840

• Feb 6, 1840

  The Treaty of Waitangi is signed in New Zealand.

• Feb 10, 1840

  Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert.

• May 1, 1840

  Britain issues the Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp.

• Jul 4, 1840

  The RMS Britannia starts the first steam transatlantic mail service from Liverpool.

• Nov 4, 1840

  William Henry Harrison defeats Martin Van Buren for the U.S. presidency.

• 1840

  Britain is fighting the First Opium War with China and the First Anglo-Afghan War.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Great Britain 1840 'VR Official' Penny Black is number 60 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (83 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The government stamp was killed by a flop: unwanted Mulready envelopes were dumped on government offices instead.
• Rowland Hill used VR Officials as test pieces to work out how to cancel stamps so they could not be cleaned and reused.
• A VR Official sold as unused turned out to be a cancelled stamp cleaned in an official trial.
• The finest known VR Official cover has been offered at £550,000.
• A forger copied the stamp in 1890, half a century after it was abandoned.