Penny Reds - Plate Numbers

At a private sale for a deceased local stamp dealer, we got another few cartons of albums.  This one was the find of the day:


It was a thick stockbook full of Queen Victoria issues from Great Britain, mostly with clear numeric postmarks.  Nothing was selling at nearly the printed prices that day, those are what we might have paid if we found the dealer at a show.  There were a few hundred stamps, listing up to $50 each, but early Great Britain always feels overpriced to me and it was hard to say how the mostly heavy postmarks would affect any prices I tried.  Then there were about 8 pages of just penny reds (Scott #33), and my brain said it was worth a closer look.  There was a note at the top of one page saying "Plate 71 to 224" which is all the plate numbers except the expensive #225.  Sure enough, in tiny numbers in the side scrollwork, it had every plate number as far as I could tell.  

I transferred them to 6 new stock pages.  Here is one of those page up close.



You can get penny reds in "10-cent each" boxes, but I can only imagine how many had to be picked through to find all those different barely visible plate numbers.  I listed these on Hipstamp, but it was hard to pick a value.  Adding the prices for all the plates came out to over $1500.  Considering the hours of work put into it, I felt like $449 was a fair price, but who knows where it will land in the end.

Here are plate 82 and 83 side by side. 

I just find it fascinating how I can be doing what some people might call a dull hobby for over 50 years, and it just never gets old.  You never know what's on the next page until you see it.

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