AR / ITEM / 00100540
Maker unknown
Robert Wallace’s annotated card carrying an unused Penny Black lettered A–I and a Mulready stationery proof.
No photograph available.
Robert Wallace, a parliamentary advocate of postal reform, preserved a Penny Black and a Mulready proof on this annotated card. His note dates the presentation of the Mulready proof by Francis Thornhill Baring to 10 April 1840; that note should not be treated as the printing date of the Penny Black. The document passed from Wallace’s estate to the Caldwell family in 1855. It appeared at Cavendish in 1991 and changed hands privately in October 2013. It was exhibited at the 2016 World Stamp Show in New York and subsequently at the National Postal Museum. Sotheby’s offered it in its 2021 Treasures auction; no completed sale is asserted here.
1855
Passed from Wallace’s estate to the Caldwell familyA
Sotheby’s records this transfer in its provenance.
8 October 2013
Sold privatelyA
The buyer is not named here.
28 October 2016–16 January 2017
Shown in From Royal Mail to Public PostA
Exhibited at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
28 May–4 June 2016
Shown at the World Stamp Show in New YorkA
Displayed at the international stamp exhibition.
Sotheby’s: the Wallace Document, Treasures 2021
↗ View original record7 December 2021
Offered in Sotheby’s Treasures auctionA
The listed estimate is not recorded as a sale price.
Penny Black
6 May 1840 · Royal Philatelic Collection
