Rare Benjamin Franklin Stamps (2024)

FAQs

How do you know if you got a 596 or 594 Franklin stamp? ›

#594 vs. #596. Scott 596 is a slightly taller design than both the flat plate printing and the rotary coil waste printing, or #594, due to the direction it was rolled around the rotary press printing cylinder. 594 is 22¼mm tall whilst this stamp is 22½mm tall.

Most 1¢ green Benjamin Franklin stamps are common and valued at less than $1, but two rotary press varieties that look almost the same as common flat-plate issues are scarce and worth thousands.

A normal 1868 George Washington postage stamp isn't worth a lot of money. However, it's worth millions of dollars if it has a B-grill mark (tiny upward-pointing dents.) In fact, there are only four George Washington B-Grill stamps that currently exist. One of these stamps was sold for about $1 million in 2008.

On the Washington-Franklin series it is a good idea to measure both the vertical and horizontal sides as some of the series are perforated 11 x 10, 10 x 11, etc. The top perforation is always quoted first in stamp catalogues. Probably the most referenced measurement in stamps are the watermark and the perforation size.

Stamps that have errors in printing, content, and perforation are considered rare, as are those limited-issue stamps where only a small number exist. Auction price databases are helpful sources in determining how often a stamp appears on the market.

Stamp ID Pro™ is a stamp collecting app that makes it easy to identify United States stamps quickly. It uses the process of elimination to identify each stamp in the least number of possible steps.

The United States post office has issued over one hundred thirty stamps depicting Benjamin Franklin.

The stamps were then discontinued in 1979 and are a fairly commmon stamp. In the current market your vintage Thomas Jefferson 1 cent stamps would value between 20-30 cents each in the current "as is" condition. If the stamps were originially connected to each other you would be looking at a higher value.

The most valuable U.S. stamp is the Abraham Lincoln, 1867, 15c, Z Grill with points down stamp.

The 1-cent magenta stamp of British Guiana was issued in 1856. The stamp depicted here is the only universally recognized example of this stamp. Rarity is always relative, but there are not many stamps of which only one example is believed to exist.

What is the most valuable stamp today? ›

The current record price for a single stamp is US$9,480,000 paid for the British Guiana 1c magenta. This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in 2023.

The Penny Red is remarked as having one of the rarest individual plate numbers in the philatelic world: The famous Plate 77. Only a handful of Plate 77s, which date from 1863, made their way into circulation.

America's most valuable postage stamp sold for nearly $4.4 million on Friday. The 1868 one-cent "Z" Grill was sold as part of the collection owned by "Bond King" Bill Gross, who co-founded asset management firm Pacific Investment Management Co., otherwise known as PIMCO. The winning bidder chose to remain anonymous.

Penny Red stamps were the main type of postage payment in the UK for almost 40 years – and they remain a much-loved part of British postal history. First printed in February 1841, its distinct brownish-red colour earned notoriety when replacing the Penny Black, just nine months after it had been issued.

Scott 596 was printed on the rotary press 1¢ green Benjamin Franklin stamps of 1924 with gauge 11 perforations both horizontally and vertically.

If the stamp you are measuring is wider or longer than the template it is a Rotary Press Printing. Until 1918, every U.S. stamp had been printed using the engraved process.