Stamp collecting stamp collecting began at the same time that stamps were first issued, and by 1860 thousands of collectors and stamp dealers were appearing around the world as this new study and hobby spread across Europe, European colonies, the United States and other parts of the world. The first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued by Britain in May 1840 and pictured a young Queen Victoria. It was produced without perforations (imperforate) and consequently had to be cut from the sheet with scissors in order to be used. While unused examples of the Penny Black are quite scarce, used examples
Denomination (postage stamp) existing denominations became worthless. In other cases, changes to the local currency have led to changes in denomination. For instance, when the Ryukyu Islands (at the time a United States protectorate) changed its currency from Yen to Dollars, a number of airmail stamps originally printed with Yen values were overprinted and re-denominated to cents in 1959–1960. During periods of hyperinflation, non-overprinted postage stamps of extraordinary denominations have been issued. As one example, in Hungary, on 15 July 1946 a AP40,000 (Hungarian adópengő) stamp featuring a diesel locomotive was issued. This was the equivalent of 80 quadrillion pengő (P80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) Denomination (postage