SG137 - Five Pound Orange of 1882

Large scan of the 1882 £5 pound orange
The largest British stamp issued.
The next British £5 was in 1977

Plate 1
All '£5 Orange' stamps have the number "1" in the top left hand corner and in the top right hand corner (referring to plate number 1). It is the bottom corner letters 'D I' that give the position of the stamp on the plate, they are at the bottom left and right (D I)

Note the difference between the slanted top to the number "1" (top left and right)

with the straight top to the alphabet "I" (bottom right),

also seen in the straight top to the "I" in FIVE POUNDS

The other high values have corner letters in all four corners indicating the position of the stamp on the plate.

The £5 Telegraph

scan courtesy Robert Murray Stamp Shop

The 1882 £5 orange was produced from the 1877 £5 Telegraph stamp by drilling out the word 'TELEGRAPHS' and replacing it by the word 'POSTAGE' and a small fill in design to make up for the 3 lost letters.

The 1877 Telegraph stamp is considerably rarer (with 84,000 stamps issued), than its 1882 postal counterpart (with 246,826 stamps issued).

I assume that the £5 orange was used for registered letters rather than the parcel post which did not start until 1883 (used £5 orange stamps usually have a nice central cancel)

Plate layout of the £5 orange
Two panes of 28 stamps (7 rows by 4)
The lettering is the reverse of the usual, the top row going from AA, BA, CA, DA
Normally the row goes AA, AB, AC, AD and the column goes AA, BA, CA etc
The current number is 526 but it is not marked on the selvage, neither is the plate number

Reconstruction of one pane of 28 £5 orange stamps (7x4)

The Five Pound Orange was prepared for king Edward VII but never issued. The next five pound stamp was issued in 1977, one hundred years after the £5 Telegraph stamp.

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