1890 Penny Postage Jubilee Medal

Using his extensive research, postal historian John Davies shares the story behind the 1890 Penny Postage Jubilee commemorative medal.

For the 1890 Penny Postage Jubilee, which celebrated 50 years of the Uniform Penny Post, a commemorative medal was produced by Spink. Exceptional rarities exist for this medal because the medal was first struck with a spelling error in that ‘SYSTEM’ was spelt incorrectly as ‘SISTEM’ (Figure 1). A proof medal in bronze with the same error is also known in The Postal Museum, London. I was inspired to tell the story of the medal after giving a Zoom talk to the Caledonian Philatelic Society, where one of the attendees, Stewart Gardiner, told me he had received a bronze medal with this rare error from Margaret Morris, which had belonged to her late husband, Edwin. Later, Stewart contacted me to say they had both decided to gift the medal to…

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Stamp Collector (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

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