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Any mention of Rowland Hill's 1840 Penny Blue stamp is usually a reference to some test printings that were reportedly made using the Penny Black plate 8 already in use. Rowland Hill had apparently asked for some test sheets of stamps featuring some proposed new colours in December 1840 and one of the sheets produced was printed in a deep blue using a Penny Black plate. The top right corner of the colour trial stamps was blank as were the sheet position letter panels in the bottom corners.

The 1840 Penny Blue Colour Trial Postage Stamp
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

It is said that a few of these colour trials "escaped" in to use but the chances of anyone ever seeing one outside of a museum are almost non-existent. Some test prints were also made using the red brown colour that was adopted for use in 1841 and, if any of these escaped in to circulation, they would be almost impossible (without genuine, clear 1840 postmarks) to distinguish from properly issued 1841 stamps.

The decision to switch the colour of Britain's penny value stamps from black to red in 1841 was done primarily to make it easier to spot cancelled stamps and prevent fraudulent reuse. The twopenny value stamps remained in blue in 1841 although a new printing ink was adopted. The design of the twopenny blue had white lines added above and below Queen Victoria's profile to make it easy to distinguish between the 1840 and 1841 twopenny imperforate line engraved issues.

Tip: Despite the easy recognition feature of white lines above and below the queen's portrait it is surprising how often I've seen an 1841 twopenny blue described as the more valuable 1840 stamp in online auctions. While I'm sure this is usually just mis-identification by inexperienced sellers, I've yet to see a similar error resulting in an 1840 2d blue stamp claimed to be a less valuable 1841 stamp!

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