180th Anniversary of Penny black

On 6th May, 1840, The world's first adhesive postage stamp "Penny Black" was born officially. Even though The British Postal System introduced it on 1st of May, the official usage of Penny Black started only from May 6th.

Earlier the postage had to be borne by the recipients.  In 1937, to reform the British Postal system Rowland Hill suggested the use of pre-payment of postage and it was accepted and the Penny Black with the profile of Queen Victoria born after 3 years. There were around 68 million Penny Blacks printed on 2,86,700 sheets. The only known complete sheets of the Penny Black are owned by the British Postal Museum.

To prevent the reuse of the same stamps they introduced a red colour franking. It rubbed off easily and failed in its purpose. This led to the introduction of black colour franking and the colour of the stamp was changed to Red in 1841.

Below Souvenir sheet was issued on April 30, 2015 by Pos Malaysia (Malaysian Post) to commemorate 175th Anniversary of The Penny Black .  The Souvenir sheet depicts the portrait of Sir Rowland Hill, who is instrumental in bringing out the fist pre-paid postage stamp and the Penny Black and Two Pence Blue stamp.

World's first Queen Elizabeth black and white hologram stamp

Island of Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands and is predominantly loyal to the British monarchy.  Even though Jersey has its own currency British pounds are also very much in circulation.  Jersey has its own  financial, legal and judicial systems but United Kingdom is responsible for the defense of Jersey.  

On 1st June, 2012 Jersey post issued the very first official Achromatic Holographic portrait of  Her Majesty, The Queen as part of Diamond jubilee celebrations.  Achromatic means free of colour, which means black and white only.

In this portrait she is wearing a black colour dress with white pearl necklace. The diadem she is wearing in this portrait has 1333 diamonds and 169 pearls. This diadem is the one she is wearing in almost all the British stamps and she worn this for her coronation procession.  The same portrait is appearing on the 100 pound Jersey notes.