St. Vincent Stamps

The St. Vincent "1 Penny Red" stamp is often a source of confusion for many collectors.

Using the Scott catalog as a guide, many collectors simply stop at Scott #1 or #2, as it is generally the first "1 penny red" stamp that one runs across in the catalog.

If one delves a bit further into the catalog, there are three other commonly found 1 penny red stamps to be found: Scott #5, 43 and 44 (plus the elusive #11).

Row 1 of the image above shows Scott (Stanley Gibbons) #2 (SG#1), 5 (SG#5), 43 (SG#48) and 44 (SG#48a).
Row 2 of the image above shows 3 forgeries. The 1st stamp is not attributed to any specific forger, the 2nd one is a lithographed forgery from the Spiro Brothers of Hamburg (approx. in the 1870-1880's) and the 3rd one is an engraved forgery by Panelli (approx. 1927).

November 12, 2006 addition: the left stamp on row 3 above shows the elusive Scott #11 (SG#10).  The color is normally identical to #1, #2 or #5, however, the picture was taken under office lighting and not via a scan, hence the appearance here is different.  The stamp shown did have a BPA certificate and permission was granted from the present owner, Crown Colony Stamps, to use the image.   The right stamp is also a Scott #11 (SG#10) but came from a Spink auction catalog image (from the May 3-14, 2008 Sovereign sale).

Note: the stamps in rows 1 and 2 are from my own collection.

Several easy ways to tell them apart:

• #1, #2, #5 and #11 are NOT watermarked, #43 & #44 ARE watermarked
• The design on #43 & #44 appears sharper.
• #1 has relatively "clean-cut" perforations 14 to 16.
• #2 has rough perforations 14 to 16, although "compound" perforations are also known.
• #5 has clean-cut perforations 11 - 13.
• #11 has clean-cut perforations 11 - 13 at top & bottom, and rough-cut perforations 14 - 16 on the sides.
• Generally speaking, #1, #2, #5 & #11 will have "A10" postmarks, while #43 & #44 have postmarks identifying the town (either fully spelled out, such as "Kingstown", or less likely with single,double or triple letter village abbreviations) plus the date.