What one black penny in the US Mint is the most valuable?
The Penny Black was the world’s first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 May, 1840, for use from 6 May of that year. All London post offices received official issues of the new stamps but other offices throughout the United Kingdom did not, continuing to accept postage payments in cash only for a period. Post offices such as those in Bath, began offering the stamp unofficially after 2 May. The Penny Black is not a rare stamp. The total print run was 286,700 sheets with 68,808,000 stamps[5] and a substantial number of these have survived, largely because envelopes were not normally used: letters in the form of letter sheets were folded and sealed, with the stamp and the address on the obverse. If the letter was kept, the stamp survived. The Penny Black is readily available on the collectors’ market; a used stamp in poor condition can cost as little as £10 ($20); in 2000, a used stamp in fine condit
This Thursday — Feb . 12 — as every schoolchild should know, is Abe Lincoln’s birthday. This year, the day is even more special: It’s the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, and the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny, the first U.S. coin stamped with the image of an actual person. It’s also the date the U.S. Mint — for the first time in 50 years — is changing the penny: replacing the image of the Lincoln Memorial that’s been on the reverse since 1959 with one of four designs highlighting different stages in our 16th president’s life. Billions of the new pennies will be produced — at a cost that’s been estimated at 1.4 cents each, which may help to explain the financial mess we’re in. (It costs seven cents to make a nickel, so eliminating the virtually useless penny, as some have suggested — Have you tried to buy anything for a penny lately? — isn’t all that’s wrong with America’s coinage.) More on the new penny in a moment, but for now we went in search of a more valuable
