Teasing trivia for stamp collectors and others Quiz

Answer: Blue

The 2d blue is the same design as the Penny Black, but has a catalogue value more than double its more famous partner for both used and mint copies. When the Penny Black was replaced in 1841 by the perforated 1d red-brown, the 2d blue was also re-issued with perfs.

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

The 5c red issued in 1847 and designated as catalogue #1 depicted a bust of Benjamin Franklin. Washington was on the other stamp issued simultaneously, the 10c black.
The 1851 issue again included stamps depicting Franklin and Washington, with Thomas Jefferson appearing on the 5c value. Andrew Jackson first appeared on an 1861 issue, and both Jackson and Abraham Lincoln featured throughout the 1860s. Numerous Presidents were featured in the years that followed, but America's second President, John Adams, did not appear on a stamp until the 1938 'Presidential' set.

Answer: Beaver

The imperforate 3-stamp set issued by Canada in 1851 a 3c red depicting a beaver, a 6c violet picturing Prince Albert and a 12c black showing Queen Victoria. Explorer Jacques Cartier was the subject of the next Canadian stamp, a single-stamp issue from 1855.

The beaver returned on one design in the 1859 set, but most Canadian stamps for the rest of the 19th Century featured Queen Victoria.

Answer: King George V

The first Australian stamps, issued in 1913, showed a kangaroo on a map of the continent. A year later, a set of stamps with the head of King George V were issued. These same two designs were re-issued numerous times with watermark and perforation variations over the next 15 years.
Captain Sturt was the first non-royal to appear on an Australian stamp, in 1930 to commemorate the centenary of his exploration of the Murray River.

Answer: Sweden

Sweden issued its first stamps in 1855, a 5-stamp set showing the national coat of arms. The lowest value, the 3 skilling banco was usually blue-green whereas the 8 skilling was yellow-orange. Due to a printing error, though, a small number of 3 skilling stamps were printed in yellow. One of these yellow errors was first sold in 1926 for £1,500.

After changing hands numerous times it was sold at auction in 1984 for almost 1m Swiss Francs, an auction record for a single stamp. In 1990 the hammer price was over $1m.

At its most recent sale, in 2010, the exact price was undisclosed, but it was said to be in excess of $2.3m, another auction record.

Answer: William Shakespeare

From the first stamp issued in 1840 until 1963, the only person whose image appeared on British stamps was the reigning monarch. That trend ended with the 1964 4-stamp issue to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth. Other commemorative issues soon followed -- Winston Churchill's death and a commemoration of the works of Robbie Burns in 1965, Gandhi on the centenary of his birth in 1969.

Answer: British Guiana

Part of a three stamp imperforate set issued by British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856, the 1c magenta value was originally intended for use on local newspapers. Originally issued only in limited numbers, only one specimen is known to exist today.

Answer: Swan

The individual states of Australia each issued their own stamps prior to unification in 1901. The first stamps for a unified Australia were issued in 1913. Western Australia's stamps, issued between 1854 and 1912, frequently showed a swan. Early issues even had a swan watermark too.
Both the kangaroo and the kookaburra appeared on early Australia issues. The duck-billed platypus can be found on some postal fiscal stamps issued by Tasmania.

Answer: Ceres

The first French stamps, a imperforate 9-stamp set issued in 1849-50, depicted Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, fertility and motherly relationships. President Louis Napoleon featured on a 2-stamp issue of 1852. Emperor Napoleon III was the subject of three issues between 1853 and 1870 before Ceres returned for both imperforate and perforated sets in 1870-73. Mercury did not feature on French stamps until 1938.

Answer: Monkey

Known as the Chinese Golden Monkey stamp, it has become one of the most popular of all modern stamp issues. In Chinese culture, both the number '8' and the color red are considered lucky -- this particular stamp showed a monkey on a red background and had a face value of 8 fen.
Although this stamp had a very low value when first issued, a full sheet of them sold for more than $180,000 in 2011. Single stamps regularly sell for more than $1,500, more than 125,000 times the original face value.