US 1851 1c Franklin Type I

A cheaper stamp for a busier country

On March 3, 1851, Congress cut postage rates. Starting July 1, a letter traveling up to 3,000 miles cost 3 cents, and 1 cent paid for newspapers, circulars and drop letters mailed within the same town. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum notes that the new 1-cent stamp prepaid categories of mail including circulars, "which today might be called 'junk mail.'" The old 1847 stamps were withdrawn, and three new values went on sale on July 1, 1851: 1 cent, 3 cents and 12 cents.

The contract went to the Philadelphia engraving firm Toppan, Carpenter, Casilear & Co., under Postmaster General Nathan K. Hall. The 1-cent design shows Benjamin Franklin, the country's first postmaster general, in profile, based on a sculpture by the French artist Jean-Jacques Caffieri. Around him the engravers placed an elaborate border of scrolls, plumes, balls and ornaments at top, bottom and sides.

That border caused a decade of trouble. The design on the master die was meant to be reproduced in each of the 200 positions on a printing plate, but when the plate makers transferred it, they found the full design was too large: ten rows of it would not fit. To make room, they shortened the transfer reliefs or burnished away parts of the design already entered on the plate. Every position ended up with a slightly different amount of border, and collectors later sorted the results into types, from the full Type I to the most common Type V.

One position out of a thousand

Five plates printed imperforate 1-cent stamps, a total of 1,000 positions. The student Stanley B. Ashbrook sorted through thousands of stamps to reconstruct those plates, and he found only one position that met his definition of Type I, with top ornaments, bottom plumes and balls, and side ornaments all present. It was position 7 in the right pane of Plate 1 in its first, or early, state, written 7R1E. That is why Scott 5 exists only from 7R1E, and why one auction firm calls it the rarest of all U.S. stamps issued regularly before the 1868 grills.

Its neighbors in the same top row, positions 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9R1E, were also entered with the full design but then had part of their bottom ornaments burnished away. Those are Type Ib, catalogued separately as Scott 5A. Plate 1 itself was reworked around May 1852, recut into its late state, and position 7R lost its full Type I design. A later theory by the specialist Richard Celler, based on 1861 government receipts for plates and transfer rolls, argues that the top row of the right pane was entered more than once with a single-relief full-design roll before the plate makers changed methods; the double transfer on 7R1E shows its final entry sits to the right of an erased first one.

That double transfer is the key to identification. The Philatelic Foundation, which expertizes stamps, describes it as showing mainly in the upper ornaments and the "OS" of POSTAGE. A stamp from the same position after the plate was reworked shows the same doubling but has incomplete bottom ornaments and a recut line. Stamps submitted as Scott 5 have turned out to be other 1-cent types, proofs (mostly of the 1875 facsimile made for the Centennial Exposition), shaved or perforated proofs and stamps with painted-in designs. The later perforated Type I comes only from Plate 12 and can be told apart by a secret dot in the oval and the absence of the 7R1E doubling. Of 84 off-cover stamps submitted to the Foundation as Scott 5 through November 1987, only 47 were genuine.

Margins are the other problem. The stamps were printed close together, and the people who separated them paid no attention to the outer ornaments, so most copies are trimmed into the very parts of the design that make them valuable. A 2010 sale catalog said only two sound copies with four full margins were known; a 2008 catalog said no fully sound four-margin example was recorded off cover. Ashbrook estimated that fewer than 36,000 Type I imperforates were printed at all.

Counting every copy

Because the stamp comes from one position, specialists have tried to record every surviving example. The census compiled by Jerome S. Wagshal, who also wrote the Philatelic Foundation's 1987 study of the 1-cent stamp, contained at least 98 unduplicated records of Scott 5 by 2010, and one auction firm estimated that no more than ten more exist outside it. Each recorded stamp carries a census number, such as 5-CAN-17 for a canceled single.

Covers are rarer still and becoming rarer. A 2008 catalog counted 21 covers still bearing Scott 5 and noted the number was falling as stamps were removed to sell as singles. A 2010 catalog said fewer than 20 survived. In July 2026 a newly discovered cover from St. Louis, tied by a "1 CT" carrier handstamp and addressed to the secretary of the Mercantile Library Association, was described as the only 7R1E with a carrier cancel and the census's 100th recorded example; the catalog said 24 of the previous 99 were on cover. The counts in these sources do not line up exactly.

New finds still happen. Around 1966 the collector Clifford C. Cole found a 7R1E in a dealer's stock identified as the common Scott 7; he told the dealer, and they agreed on a compromise price. That stamp sold in October 2008 for $27,000; at the same sale, another 7R1E, cut in at top and bottom but bearing Ashbrook's own pencil note on the back identifying the position, brought $28,000. A copy offered in May 2008 was billed as the first addition to the census since its publication.

The Ferrary strip and other famous copies

Only three unused 7R1E stamps are recorded. The finest began as part of a strip of three in the collection of Philipp von Ferrary, the great Paris collector: the Type I single with a pair of Type Ib stamps. An agent for the American collector Arthur Hind acquired the strip, and it stayed intact when Sir Nicholas Waterhouse bought it at the 1933 Hind sale. Waterhouse cut the Type I away and offered it during World War II in one of the charity auctions held in England for the Red Cross and St. John Fund.

When the Waterhouse collection was sold in London in 1955, Raymond H. Weill flew there to buy the Type Ib pair, which he reunited with the Type I single. Bill Gross bought all three stamps together as a single lot at a 1994 sale for $187,000. At the June 14, 2024, evening sale of his collection in New York, they were offered separately: the Type I single, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000, sold for $401,200, and the Type Ib pair sold for $88,500.

The most celebrated cover carries a strip of three, positions 7 to 9R1E, canceled in red, from the Newbury, Ishikawa and Boker collections. Another, mailed from Philadelphia in February 1852 on a printed annual report of a life insurance company, with a sound four-margin 7R1E, came from the Caspary collection and was owned by Raymond Vogel for more than 40 years; it sold at auction in December 2010 for $105,000. An L-shaped strip on an 1851 Boston cover, combining Types I, Ib and II, sold in 2008 for $50,000.

Most copies trade far lower, and condition explains the gap. Sound used singles with clear type features brought $52,500 in September 2010 and $67,500 in October 2007, while copies with faults, thins or cut-in margins sold for $15,250 to $32,500. One four-margin Boston copy with a crease sold in March 2011 for $25,000 and again in February 2012 for $26,000.

The stamp that made specialists

No other 19th-century U.S. stamp has so many type classifications. The 1-cent 1851 to 1861 accounts for 18 major catalog listings, a fact critics cite as specialization run amok. One auction catalog answered them with a golf analogy: dropping the ball in the hole would attract more players too. Ashbrook's two-volume study appeared in 1938, and Mortimer Neinken's 1972 revision is still the standard guide to plating the stamp.

For the collector trying to fill every space in a U.S. album, Scott 5 is one of the hardest of the early spaces. For the specialist, it is proof that a single misstep at a Philadelphia engraving firm in 1851 could create a rarity that people still argue over, count and hunt for 175 years later.

The numbers

Issue date

July 1, 1851

Source position

7R1E only (Plate 1 Early, right pane, position 7)

Quantity printed

Fewer than 36,000 (Ashbrook estimate); 30,000 in one collector reference

Recorded copies

At least 98 (Wagshal census, 2010); 100 by one July 2026 count

Unused recorded

3

Perforation

Imperforate

Sheet format

200 stamps in two panes of 100

Color

Blue

Timeline

1. Mar 3, 1851

   Congress passes the act cutting postage rates, effective July 1.

2. Jul 1, 1851

   The 1-cent, 3-cent and 12-cent stamps are issued; Plate 1 Early, the source of 7R1E, is in use from the first day.

3. Jul 5, 1851

   Earliest documented use of the Type I, according to one collector reference.

4. Aug 16, 1851

   A Boston cover is mailed bearing an L-shaped strip with Types I, Ib and II, the only recorded used multiple in that combination.

5. Feb 1852

   A sound four-margin 7R1E is used on a printed report mailed from Philadelphia; the cover later sells for $105,000.

6. May 1852

   Around this time Plate 1 is reworked and recut into its late state, ending production of Type I imperforates.

7. 1861

   The 1851 to 1857 stamps are demonetized.

8. 1875

   A Type I facsimile, perforated 12 and without gum, is made for the 1876 Centennial Exposition.

9. 1933

   Sir Nicholas Waterhouse buys the Ferrary strip of three at the Hind sale and later separates the Type I single.

10. 1938

    Stanley B. Ashbrook publishes his two-volume study of the 1-cent stamp.

11. 1955

    Raymond H. Weill buys the Type Ib pair at the Waterhouse sale in London and reunites it with the Type I.

12. 1966

    Around this year Clifford C. Cole finds a 7R1E misidentified as Scott 7 in a dealer's stock.

13. 1972

    Mortimer L. Neinken publishes his revision of Ashbrook's plating study.

14. Dec 1987

    The Philatelic Foundation publishes Jerome Wagshal's study; of 84 off-cover Scott 5 submissions, 47 were genuine.

15. 1994

    Bill Gross buys the unused Type I and Type Ib pair as one lot for $187,000.

16. Dec 2010

    The ex-Caspary Philadelphia cover sells at auction for $105,000.

17. Jun 14, 2024

    The finest unused 7R1E sells at auction in New York for $401,200.

18. Jul 28, 2026

    A newly found St. Louis carrier cover with 7R1E is offered as the 100th recorded example.

The world in 1851

• May 6, 1851

  John Gorrie of Apalachicola, Florida, receives a patent for a machine to make ice.

• May 29, 1851

  Sojourner Truth delivers the first version of her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech in Akron, Ohio.

• Aug 22, 1851

  The yacht America wins the first America's Cup race off the coast of England.

• Sep 18, 1851

  The New York Times is founded.

• Nov 13, 1851

  The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers of what becomes Seattle.

• Nov 14, 1851

  Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is published in the United States.

• Dec 29, 1851

  The first YMCA in the United States opens in Boston.

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, US 1851 1c Franklin Type I is number 28 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 (40 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Scott 5 comes from a single spot on a single printing plate: position 7 in the right pane of Plate 1, before the plate was reworked in 1852.
• Of the 84 off-cover stamps sent to the Philatelic Foundation as Scott 5 through 1987, 37 were not genuine; most were other 1-cent types or proofs submitted in error.
• The finest unused copy spent decades as part of a strip of three before a British owner cut it off and offered it in a World War II charity auction.
• The 1-cent 1851 design has 18 major catalog listings, more type classifications than any other 19th-century U.S. stamp.
• Around 1966 a collector found a 7R1E sitting in a dealer's stock as a common stamp; it sold for $27,000 in 2008.
• A 7R1E on cover with a St. Louis carrier marking surfaced only in 2026, the first recorded with a carrier cancel.