Essays & Proofs Plate Layout & Types Imprints & Recutting Colors & Perforations Postal History Demonetization

The Act of 1851 created sharply reduced postal rates that required a new issue of stamps to replace the 5¢ and 10¢ stamps of the 1847 issue. The 3¢ stamp was designed to pay the single letter rate (a letter weighing less than 1/2 ounce) for distances under 3,000 miles.

In contrast to the 1847 stamps, that saw only 4,400,000 of both values produced, it is estimated that over one billion 3¢ 1851 stamps were printed during its 10 year life. Large numbers of these have survived, to delight and sometimes confound both stamp specialists and postal historians.

Before the rate changes went into effect on July 1, 1851, the Postmaster General invited six Bank Note Engraving Companies to bid on the production of the new stamps. This notice specified that bids were to be accompanied by proposed designs for the 3¢ stamp only, although the contract was to initially cover three denominations—1¢, 3¢ and 12¢. The successful bidder was Toppan, Carpenter, Casilear & Co., headquartered in Philadelphia.

Figure 1. The Toppan, Carpenter, Casilear & Co. dual essay. The left-hand design served as the base from which the 3¢ stamp was built.

Shown here is the nearly square dual essay of the design, with different shaped tablets for the lettering at the top and bottom, but with none of the ornaments that were eventually used along the edges, including the vertical inner lines. The general style shown on the left was adopted and the rectangular die proof (still bearing the layout lines, with the added inner lines, rosettes, diamond blocks and triangles along the edges, represents the final design of the stamp. [see Figures 1 & 2]

Figure 2. The die proof of the 3¢ stamp. It has not yet been "cleaned up" to remove stray bits of the tessellated work in white areas or the layout lines at left, top and bottom. The finished die was used to produce the transfer roll used to lay out the plates.

Figure 3. Scott #10, reconstructed orange brown block of six from plate 0 [two horizontal strips of three].

#11. Also Type I on imperforate stamps in all the other known colors, printed from 1852 to 1857. [see Figure 4]

Figure 4. Scott # 11, mint gutter block from Plate 11 Late, showing the centerline that terminates in a large dot at the bottom.

#25. Type I stamps from the "imperforate" plates that were perforated before the "perforated" plates were put to press. [see Figure 5]

Figure 5. Scott # 25, mint block of four from Plate 5 Late showing recut inner lines.

#26. Type II stamps, printed from plates with continuous vertical frame lines. [see Figure 6]

Figure 6. Scott #26, mint block of 12 with continuous vertical frame lines.

#26a. Type IIa stamps printed from plates with discontinuous vertical frame lines. [see Figure 7]

Figure 7. Scott #26a, mint block from Plate 10 (3-4/13-14R10, early state) with discontinuous vertical frame lines.

Figure 8. Mint block of eight shows the full left imprint and plate number 24.

Plate 0 is the only 3¢ plate that was taken out of service before plate numbers were first used, hence its designation as "0." The first plate used to print the 3¢ stamps did not receive its number until October, 1851, when it was reentered with the transfer roll and heavily recut, creating Plate 1 Late. Several early and intermediate states of some plates were also taken out of use before numbers were used: Plates 1 Early, 1 Intermediate, 2 Early and 5 Early. The Late states of each of these plates bore their appropriate numbers. While imprints were impressed on the plate with a special transfer roll, the plate numbers were all hand engraved directly onto the plate.

Figure 9. Earliest known use of any United States 3¢ stamp bearing plate number 1.It was used on December 31, 1851 at Philadelphia. The detail shows the "o" of "No" and ‘1."

The process of duplicating the design for the full plates of 200 stamps each was so imprecise that a very large number of recuttings and flaws, as well as double and triple transfers were produced. Recutting describes the attempt to deepen lines of the die that had transferred faintly if at all on many plates. This was done by hand rather than by re-entry with the transfer roll. Because they were done by hand each example is different from every other one. Twenty-nine plates were used to produce the 3¢ stamps. Several of these exist in more than one state, meaning that they were taken out of production at least once, were wholly or partially reentered with the transfer roll and sometimes recut (typically the frame lines or inner lines, but sometimes recutting occurs on other parts of the designs). Each of these reentries created a "new" plate for purposes of reconstructing the plates. The most extreme example is Plate 1, which has three states—Plate 1 Early, Plate 1 Intermediate and Plate 1 Late. The total number of stamp positions on all of these plates exceeded 6,000. Because of the recutting and the variations caused by the entry system, a great many of them can be assigned to their specific positions on a particular plate.

Attempting to reconstruct these plates has been an absorbing lifetime endeavor for generations of collectors, starting with Dr. Carroll Chase, whose pioneering work The 3¢ Stamp of the United States 1851-1857 Issue is still used by persons interested in "plating." This effort was so widespread that in 1948 a society was formed, called "The Three Cent 1851-57 Unit of the American Philatelic Society." The postal history of the 3¢ stamp was always a part of their research and eventually they turned their attention to both stampless covers and to all stamp issues prior to the time the Bureau of Engraving and Printing took over the production of United States stamps. In 1964 this group’s name was changed to the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, Inc.

Figure 10. First day cover [July 1, 1851] from Mobile, Alabama. The stamp is from Plate 1 Early.

Figure 11. Here, the entire first three denominations of the 1851 issue 1¢, 3¢ and 12¢ are on one cover.

By 1855 the British Post Office had begun to perforate their postage stamps, as a convenience in separating them. Prior to perforation stamps were cut from their sheets with scissors or some other method, including tearing them away, with or without the aid of a fold. But perforating machines required perfectly spaced and aligned stamps on a plate; otherwise, the perforations were bound to cut into at least some of the stamps. Perforated Type I stamps, made from the old "imperforate" plates (Scott 25) illustrate the problem—examples can rarely be obtained with all four margins intact. By 1856 the Postmaster General had determined to adopt perforations for United States stamps and in early 1857 they began to appear. A machine purchased from a British firm, Bemrose & Co., was used. This was a rouletter but was modified by Toppan, Carpenter & Co. in Philadelphia to produce perforations rather than slitting.

Figure 12. Earliest known use of an officially perforated United States stamp. It entered the mail at Philadelphia on February 28, 1857.

Postal history associated with some 3¢ covers exemplifies the exciting history of the period or explosive changes in the way the mails were carried. The categories of postal history collecting during this decade are almost as voluminous and complex as the stamps themselves. A few of those are shown here, from the ominous approach of the Civil War to the freaky madness of a lad attempting to gain the attention of his girl friend by decorating the entire face of his envelope with the stamp.

---

Figure 13. Scott #10 with #LO1, the Franklin carrier used at New Orleans on 01-21-52, with a green New Orleans "snow shovel" City Post handstamp. Missing a second carrier stamp, which was cut from the cover. This is the only Franklin carrier used with a regular U.S. postage stamp.	Figure 14. Scott #10 with a blue boxed TROY & NEW YORK/STEAM BOAT marking, indicating carriage by a non-contract boat on the Hudson River. The "2 cts." mark indicated 2¢ was due from the addressee for the amount paid to the boat captain for delivery to the Troy post office.
Figure 15. Two Scott #11 sheet margin copies paying the 6¢ ocean mail rate to California, with the first type New York City townmark used on ocean mail from there.	Figure 16. Sand Hill MO sent to Stockton CA "By the Overland mail via Firt Yuma." Rated 7¢ due for a total of 10¢ after the 3¢ rate for 3,000 miles or less was withdrawn and a 10¢ "over the mountains" rate was established.
Figure 17. The C.O.C. & P.P. Express out of St. Joseph MO was the predecessor of the Pony Express. The initials stood for Central Overland, California & Pikes Peak Express, although just before the pony Express bankrupted the company it was waggishly said to mean "Clean Out of Cash & Poor Pay." Addressed to Mountain City, Kansas Territory, before the area around the front range of the Rockies was cut off to form Colorado Territory when Kansas became a State.	Figure 18. A bisected 3¢ stamp used to make up the 10¢ rate from the West Coast to Oyster Bay NY on June 29, 1855. All of the stamps are from Plate 1 Late. The diagonal bisect technically created a one-half cent overpayment of the rate. The cover traveled the ocean mail route from San Francisco to the East Coast via Panama.
Figure 19. A letter from New York City to Montreal paying the double weight rate of 20¢ between the United States and Canada. The strip of six orange brown stamps (Scott #10) are from Plate 5 Early. The two 1¢ stamps are Type II, from Palte 1 Early. This was the "through" rate established by the U.S.-Canadian postal convention of April, 1851. The cover arrived at Montreal on October 18, 1851.	Figure 20. The "Progress" envelope produced by J. Valentine of Dundee, Scotland. The design (from lower left to upper right) tells the story of what happened to the idyllic riverside landscape from the time it was occupied by an Indian family till it became a city with smoke-belching factories and trains (partially obscured by the stamp).
Figure 21. An 1860 political campaign cover, featuring Lincoln as the Railsplitter: "Constitution and the Union—Harmony and Prosperity to all."	Figure 22. An 1856 love letter from a young man attending the West Jersey Academy in Bridgeton NJ to his girl friend. He found an intriguing way to attract attention to his envelope by segmenting the stamp and artistically scattering its parts across the envelope's face. The postmaster did not object.

Figure 23. A seven star Confederate States patriotic cover used from Tennessee in 1861 before the U.S. cut off mail service to the seceded states. The writer wrote in abbreviation's for the states he expected would secede, which would have brought the number of stars in the flag to fourteen.

The Postmaster General was concerned about large quantities of stamps that remained in the hands of southern postmasters and decided to render them useless by "demonetization." Because the new 1861 stamps were supplied to selected cities as supplies became available, a rolling type of exchange of the old stamps for the new was adopted. When the new stamps were received at a post office the postmaster advertised in a local paper, giving the public five days in which to make the exchange. After that time, the old stamps would no longer be accepted for postage. Attempted uses after local demonetization gave rise to a number of explanatory markings, the most famous of which is the OLD STAMPS/NOT RECOGNIZED used at Philadelphia.

Figure 24. The SOUTHN LETTER/UNPAID handstamp was struck over the North Carolina PAID on June 27, 1861, just 27 days after the U.S. Post Office Department had suspended mail service to the seceded states. The 3¢ stamp was ignored and the addressee paid 3¢ in cash to receive it.

.com