Penny Venetian Red of "POSTAGE" and "ONE PENNY" that its predecessors bore. It was decided that a new colour would also be desirable to defend against improper re-use; a fugitive lilac ink was used that would run and spoil the stamp if one attempted to wash off the cancellation. The Lilacs broke the tradition of using corner letters and instead had either fourteen or sixteen dots in each corner. Penny Venetian Red The Penny Venetian Red was a British postage stamp equal to the value of one penny. Issued in 1880, it was designed and surface-printed by security printing company De La Rue.
Penny at Soho Mint in Birmingham in 1797. Typically, 1 lb. of copper produced 24 pennies. In 1860, the copper penny was replaced with a bronze one (95% copper, 4% tin, 1% zinc). Each pound of bronze was coined into 48 pennies. The United States' cent—popularly known as the "penny" since the early 19th century—began with the unpopular copper chain cent in 1793. The penny that was brought to the Cape Colony (in what is now South Africa) was a large coin — 36 mm in diameter, 3.3 mm thick and — and the twopence was correspondingly larger at 41 mm