Black Jack (stamp)

For other uses of the word, see Black Jack (disambiguation).

1863 "Black Jack" issue

Black Jack or Blackjack was the 2-Cent denomination United States postage stamp issued from July 1, 1863 to 1869, is generally referred to as the "Black Jack" due to the large portraiture of the United States President, Andrew Jackson on its face printed in pitch black.^[1]

The stamp was issued to fulfill a need for a reduced rate, 2-Cent denomination for newspaper, magazine, and local deliveries; and was often used to "make up" higher rates, or split in half to make up lower ones (a 1-Cent stamp) due to shortages at the local post office.^[1]

During the Civil War, the "Black Jack" was supposed to have been favored by both North and South, but as soon as the South got news of the North making a stamp depicting one of their own heroes, they printed a 2-Cent stamp depicting the same portrait of Jackson on their own 'Red Jack' postage stamp in reaction.

After the War was over, poverty inspired people to wash off the cancellation from the stamps and attempt to use them again. The Government then decided to put an antitheft device onto the stamps known as a grill. This grill, which consisted of various rows of tiny indentations into the stamps, was supposed to make it impossible to wash off the cancellations without being detected; but people usually got around this by bisecting the stamp, and then reusing that portion that didn't have a cancellation on it. The first grill applied to a Black Jack stamp is known as the "Z" grill, introduced in January 1868. Over the next few months, the Post Office successively employed three smaller grill patterns (D, E and F) in the production of this stamp.

External links

Siegel Auction Galleries - 1867–68 U.S. Grilled Issues

References

1 2 "2-cent Jackson issue of 1863". Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Retrieved 18 December 2010.

Sources

Scott Publishing Company, 2005 Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers (2004)
Lester G. Brookman, The 19th Century Postage Stamps of the United States (1947, vol. I) [exhaustive information about "grills"]
John Kerr Tiffany, History of the Postage Stamps of the United States of America (1887)
John Nicholas Luff, The Postage Stamps of the United States (1902)

Postage stamps of the United States

Stamps	1918 Curtiss Jenny airmail stamps Inverted Jenny 1869 Pictorial Issue 1930 Graf Zeppelin stamps All Aboard! 20th Century American Trains Americana series Bicentennial Series Black Jack Breast cancer research stamp Celebrate the Century CIA invert Columbian Issue Comic Strip Classics Dag Hammarskjöld invert Distinguished Americans series Federal Duck Stamp Five cents John Kennedy Fourth Bureau issue Great Americans series Hanukkah stamps Hawaiian Missionaries Liberty Issue Lost Continental Nature of America Nixon invert Norse-American Centennial Oklahoma Statehood Stamps Overrun Countries series Pan-American invert Presidential Issue Prominent Americans series Series of 1902 Statue of Liberty Forever stamp Trans-Mississippi Issue Transportation coils U.S. Parcel Post stamps of 1912–13 US Regular Issues of 1922–31 Washington Bicentennial stamps of 1932 Washington-Franklin Issues Western Cattle in Storm Z Grill

Provisional stamps	Alexandria "Blue Boy" Postmaster's Provisional Gallery of U.S. Postmasters' Provisional Stamps, 1845–47 New York Postmaster's Provisional St. Louis Bears

Related	American Bank Note Company Artists of stamps of the United States Clair Aubrey Houston Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States List of fictional characters on stamps of the United States History of United States postage rates History of Virginia on stamps Homer Lee Bank Note Company List of people on the postage stamps of the United States List of United States airmail stamps Presidents of the United States on U.S. postage stamps Raising the Flag at Ground Zero Territories of the United States on stamps U.S. space exploration history on U.S. stamps United States Postal Service Women on US stamps

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Black Jack (stamp)

See also

External links

References

Sources