Description
Description
— New stock added —
A very hard-to-find 1½p puffin definitive essay, prepared by the Lundy Philatelic Service in 1977, and never officially issued.
Only 2,000 were produced, and none were used for postage; examples were only distributed to LPS subscribers and Cinderella Stamp Club members.
Listed in Jon Aitchison’s Lundy catalogue as number 239.
This particular example has some minor gum discolouration (toning) which means we cannot really sell it as “unmounted mint”; we are therefore listing it as effectively “mounted mint”, with the price reduced accordingly relative to unmounted mint examples.
M/M / Mounted Mint / MH / Mint Hinged.
About Lundy
Lundy is a three-mile-long island in the Bristol Channel, whose stamps are among the longest-established and most sought-after local issues.
Unlike many labels that bear the name of British offshore islands – such as Eynhallow or Staffa – Lundy’s stamps have always performed a genuine local postal function. When the British General Post Office withdrew its services from the island in 1928, the then-owner Martin Coles Harman introduced the first Lundy stamps in 1929 to cover the cost of carrying mail to the mainland. Those and subsequent stamps are denominated in “puffins”, with one puffin equivalent to one penny.
To avoid confusion, Lundy stamps initially had to be fixed to the reverse of any postal items. From 1962, Lundy stamps were allowed were allowed to be affixed to the address side of postcards – but still well away from the ‘official’ British stamp – with this policy extended to all mail in 1992. These days, mail from the island only requires a Lundy stamp, which now incorporates the Royal Mail charge – indicated by an additional meter mark – alongside the extra “puffinage”.
Since 1969, Lundy has been owned by the National Trust, but financed, administered and maintained by the Landmark Trust, who continue to issue Lundy stamps. As of 2025, over 400 Lundy stamps have now been produced over the past nine decades – most recently, in 2025, to commemorate the Lundy Bird Observatory – and 40,000 items of mail are sent annually. Many of the older issues – and even some of the more modern ones – are scarce and, in some cases, quite valuable.
You can read more about the Lundy postal service on the Landmark Trust website.
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