The centenary year of the British commemorative is the perfect time to celebrate the best of this category of stamp.
Most of us come into stamp collecting via commemoratives of some sort.
They’re often bright, attractively designed stamps and are made with an eye on collector purchases.
Although British stamps led the world when the Penny Black was first posted in 1840 it wasn’t until 1924 that an official commemorative was issued.
Commemoratives are usually distinguished by how plainly they make their dedication.
British stamp issues had previously been tied to coronations and jubilees, for example, but it wasn’t until the the first of our 5 chosen issues that they spelled out what they were celebrating.
Here we celebrate 5 favourite GB commemoratives that with their significance, value or beauty will enhance any collection.
British Empire Exhibition 1924
Roaring into a new postal era with the first ever GB commemoratives.
Harold Nelson designed these rather lovely stamps.
He also illustrated the 1929 commemoratives for the Postal Union Congress of 1929.
Here, he’s working in Art Deco style, to produce a very stirring rendering of the Wembley Lion.
The lion was the emblem of the Empire Exhibition, which was an attempt to showcase what was by 1924 - after WWI with the US growing in stature and Britian signalling it would leave India - perhaps no longer the world’s preeminent power.
Maybe the Exhibition’s greatest legacy was the Empire Stadium, known as Wembley for most of its life as the national sporting stadium.
The stamps were a big hit, issued in 1d and 1 1/2d colour variants, they sold out and were reprinted the following year with a 1925 date added.
Standard versions of the stamp are not especially valuable and you will need to find special cancellations, design-stage prints, or groups to hit the jackpot with this issue. First day covers can be worth hundreds of pounds too.
1935 2½d Prussian Blue Silver Jubilee Stamp
A wonderful shade of blue, but not what the king wanted.
We love mistakes. And this is a wonderful error in my opinion, because it’s such a lovely stamp.
Can you believe this fabulous shade was the wrong choice?
Blame the boss.
King George V loved stamps and is the man most responsible for making the British royals just about the most significant stamp collectors on the planet.
He wasn’t at all shy about it either, and had no problem contributing to the design process when a set of stamps was proposed for his Silver (25 year) Jubilee.
The King finally selected a design by Barnett Freeman, in blue.
Not Prussian blue.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the line that message got lost and a few sheets of Prussian blue stamps were produced.
No problem. They could be destroyed.
But even that was botched and 480 stamps were sold into circulation.
As is famously the case with the American “Inverted Jenny” error, someone spotted the freak stamps and snapped up as many as they could.
That meant more have survived than probably would have been the case had they just been used for normal postage.
But with known numbers in the low 300s this is still one of the all-time rarest British stamp and should set you back at least £10,000 in any condition.
1951 Festival of Britain
There's a sharp, fresh look to these 1951 designs.
There’s a nice symmetry to bringing in the issue from the 1951 Festival to match the Empire set from 1924.
This was a very different Great Britain. No longer head of an Empire, but the leading nation in a Commonwealth.
It’s common to record the early 1950s as being very much in the shadow of WWII. And appropriately so - food rationing didn’t end completely until 1954.
But there was also a confidence to the country that had been at the centre of the coalition that defeated the Nazis, fascist Italy and imperial Japan.
Designed as a “tonic for the nation” the Festival was relentlessly forward looking, and the modernist design of the posters is now celebrated as iconic.
These stamps fared well too. They were popular with the public and are now sought after by collectors, though most aren’t of any high monetary value.
They are a great memento of a moment in time.
1969 Post Office Technology
The future looked bright.
You will excuse personal taste intruding here as I pick one of my favourite designs.
It’s also nice to include a set that celebrates the postal system itself.
This issue has a great 60s look in fabulous colours.
The forward-pointing G of the Giro system, an early networked computer set up.
The globe of linking lines that signify world-wide telecommunications.
The more parochial matter of the UK’s automated mail sorting system.
And, a super-sci-fi what…? It’s actually a Pulse Code Modulation rendered in graphic form. In real life this innovation meant multiple phone conversations could be carried out over the same circuit.
Rather technical matters given real visual appeal by David Gentleman, who was responsible for the designs.Gentleman worked on over 100 stamp issues (and many unissued ones too) and you could argue his work makes him one of the most popular and significant British designers of the late 20th century.
I enjoy his work on this set, and issues like the Shakespeare set.
Although there’s a futuristic air to his work he usually worked with woodcut illustrations.
1968 Christmas
These imprimaturs showcase the lovely illustration as brightly as you'll ever see it.
We must have a Christmas issue.
Christmas stamps first came out in 1966. Although they reappeared in 1967 they weren’t yet regarded as a regular fixture in the postal calendar.
The 1968 set, the third, perhaps made sure they were.
They are here because they are so charming: a vibrant celebration of Christmas as a warm, loving, family time. Very different from the pomp and circumstance of some stamp issues.
Rosalind Dease was the designer.
She used her daughter as the model for the little girl on the rocking horse. The child's father? That was David Gentleman, and the then husband-and-wife team did work together on some stamp designs.
These were all Rosalind's though, and around 320 million of the 4d rocking horse stamps were sold, though were only in the shops for a month.
They’re the opposite of rare, and for valuable versions you’ll need to find errors or early stages in the design process.
Collect British commemoratives now
A full set of British commemoratives, all 100 years’ worth of them, would be a wonderful collecting achievement.
And once you get into the all the possible variants you’re looking at quite a task.
Once you’re finished I would argue you have as good a cultural record of the UK as any art, design, literary or film library can give you.
We often have exciting British commemoratives in stock. You can see our full selection here.
