On the podium: Great Britain 1 (1840)

These stamps, issued by Mexico in 1940, are actually two sets combined: 5 stamps for regular mail, and 5 for air mail - so there are two versions of each value. In contrast to Bulgaria, who chose a national stamp for the centenary of the first postage stamp, Mexico did the right thing and they did it with gusto: 10 stamps depicting the British Penny Black of 1940. Never mind the colors, they don't tally with the first Queen Victorias, they are used just as visual signals to differentiate between the different values for the post office clerks and the stamp buyers, and for sheer beauty's sake. The hand-drawn font gives them a vague folk-art feeling. A nice set to see in any stamps on stamps collection.

Mexico 754-58 + C103-107

No other stamp has been honoured so many times on other stamps than the world's first postage stamp, Great Britian 1, nicknamed the Penny Black. It was black, sold for a penny and was issued in droves in 1840 and several years thereafter. Every stamp collector ought to have one, and I'm no exception. Mine should of course have had the C-H letter codes in the lower corner, to correspond with the one on the Mexican stamps, but alas... Those early Great Britain issues are not as rare as one could surmise. They can be found here, and the prices are sometimes affordable. I think that is the place where I bought mine.

1840 is quite a long time ago. In a book from 1962 by Gustav Schenk (a German) I found the following passage:

In 1845, five years after the epoch-making introduction of the postage stamp, this item of news appeared in a German illustrated magazine:

In England, which has a very insignificant yet regular postal service, the Post Office sells small square pieces of paper bearing the head of the Queen, and these are stuck on the letter to be franked. In this simple manner the postage due is paid. To prevent a label being used twice the Post Office cancels the little piece of paper on the letter received with a black cross. The Queen's head look very pretty and the English reveal their strange character by collecting these stamps.

So, stamp collecting was already a hobby worth mentioning only five years after the Penny Black issue!