Unused British Victorian Stamps
All stamp collectors will know that stamps in mint condition, or rather, mint never-hinged, are the most valuable of all stamps aside from rare one print only stamps. During the Victorian era, more than 200 billion letters were sent, and that means that British stamp production was at its peak.
Postage Revolution
The Victorian era was monumental is British postage history. While for a long time people cut stamps out with scissors, perforation soon became commonplace and the standard. An explosion of experimentation began, resulting in the 1847 octagonal British embossed stamps, and the 1855 4-dimensional surface-printed stamps. These became standard as time moved forward, resulting in the disappearance of engraved stamps of Queen Victoria in 1870.
Branching out to all areas of the British Empire, there are millions of stamps to collect, including Malay, South African and Indian stamps printed in the Victorian era in their own unique styles, with Queen Victoria's famous profile gracing them.
Traditional Aesthetics
Each and every surface-printed stamp between the years of the 1860s and 1870s used the same profile image of Queen Victoria. This, however, didn't stop each stamp from being valuable. Coming in a variety of colours such as carmine, green, orange, lilac, and red, each stamp is revered by the stamp-collecting industry. With different printing methods, such as embossed, line-engraved and surface-printers, each stamp collector can't get enough of each type of stamp.
Due to the manual methods of stamp printing at the time, each and every stamp is unique. While some may be perfectly printed, some may have overlapping details, signatures, and patterned ink-stamps on them. There are rare stamps that have black borders or ink-like details on them, being the result of the British empire using the mourning layout on their envelopes whilst mailing, as Queen Victoria passed away in 1901.