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How to Tell if a Postage Stamp Is Rare or Not

The first country to introduce the adhesive postage stamp was Great Britain in 1840. From there, its use spread rapidly to both North and South America and to what is now the Commonwealth. Thanks to assiduous collectors, many stamps have survived in great numbers and most are worth pennies only. For a stamp to be rare, it usually has to be very early or to have a high denomination (its value when issued) or to be unusual because of some printing error or other circumstance.

Instructions

- 1
  
  At the bottom of this page is a collectible British 5 shilling stamp.
  
  Inspect your stamp for signs of age. Look for muted coloring, a slight tanning to the paper and softening to the corners. If a stamp is very early, it is usually "imperforate," that is, it lacks a perforated edge. Postmasters used to snip individual stamps from a sheet (known as a "block"). In the 1850s, a machine was introduced to punch lines of holes between the stamps.
- 2
  Check the stamp's printed value or "denomination." The higher the denomination, the fewer would have originally been in circulation. Bear in mind that a printed value that seems inexpensive as of 2010 might have been quite costly to letter-writers of a hundred or so years ago. In 1893, for instance, a five-dollar stamp was issued to commemorate the Columbian Exposition -- a princely sum at the time.
- 3
  Research the stamp in your local library in guides such as the "Scott U.S. Stamp Pocket Catalog." It's only by studying such guides carefully that you will discover if some other factor might come into play. Collectors place great store on subtle variations in paper or color, tiny flaws in the printing process and what are known as "marginal markings," printer's codes which occasionally creep onto the stamps. For instance, there is a collectible variant of the 37-cent commemorative stamp for the Athens Olympic Games of 2004 with a marginal marking along its bottom edge. However, it can take some perseverance to spot these minuscule errors.

Stamp Collecting