ADVENTURES OF A STAMP NEWBIE

Newcomer Laura Mcinerney wonders how decimalisation affected stamps

If you’re ever in need of cheering up, I strongly recommend finding the Max Bygraves ‘Decimalisation song’ (you can watch it over on our sister website allaboutcoins.co.uk) and playing it at full whack. Trumpets blast out as Bygraves jubilantly declares, “there’s a hundred new pennies now for every pound”, in the sort of voice usually reserved for celebrating the end of a war.

It’s now fifty years since the United Kingdom decimalised its currency, as noted in a recent Stamp Collector article by Larry Haber (March edition). The history surrounding the event is fascinating in itself. It also coincided with a postal strike ensuring all kinds of fun collectors’ items from February 1971, including very delayed first day covers.

For the beginner collector of Great British stamps, decimalisation is a critical concept in categorising stamps. Most auction catalogues and information books batch stamps by monarch: the two Edwards, the two Georges, Victoria and Elizabeth II. It makes sense to do this because the monarch’s head appears on all stamps and gives a quick sense as to when it was sold.

In the case of Elizabeth II, however, it is common to see the era split into pre and post-decimalisation. One key reason for making sure you know which side of the divide you are buying is that mint stamps from before 1971 cannot be used to send post.

A problem for younger collectors, raised in a world far removed from ‘old money’, is that it’s not easy to conceive of a currency based around the number twelve. A quick google will find a variety of conversion tables to help with the maths. But pre-decimal stamps have other oddities. For a start, where modern stamps have pennies denoted by a ‘p’, pre-decimal stamps have a ‘d’ on them. For example, the 1958 Cardiff Commonwealth Games stamp depicts a dragon, Queen Elizabeth, and the number ‘3d’. But what does the d stand for? Growing up no one ever mentioned a unit of currency beginning with d?

Then there’s the fractions. In 1953, the special stamps published commemorating Queen Elizabeth’s commemoration came in two values: 2½d and 1’3. What on earth do those mean? At first I presumed the 1’3 meant 1 pound and 3 shillings, and perhaps the pound sign perhaps hadn’t yet been invented. Flipping back through the catalogue, however, there’s a beautiful 1929 stamp, in celebration of the Postal Union Congress, with an elaborate pound symbol denoting the £1 value. Even more strangely, all other stamps in the 1920s mention ‘pence’ again.

So, where did this ‘d’ come from, and is there a Max Bygraves song I can listen to that will set me straight?!