I was intrigued to find this “Free Front” in an album I recently acquired. It is a fragment from a letter, showing an address and a double-ring type FREE handstamp, in red. Dated 1835, it predates the Penny Post and first GB postage stamps by 5 years. A Free Front is such a remnant of…

Here is a very plain-looking postage stamp. It has not been used, so has no postal cancellations, but it has been hinged to mount it in a stamp album. It is printed in one colour – red – and is actually not very well printed: note how off-centre it is, and the messy perforations –…

A part-used stamp booklet from 1935 Front Cover Amongst a treasure-trove of mint stamps from the 1940s, unearthed by my mother-in-law from a metal box that had lain under a bed for decades, was this little gem, a King George V May 1935 Silver Jubilee stamp book (Stanley Gibbons ref. BB16). A remnant of her…