Penny Lilac as perfins - that is with initials or insignia added as perforations to mint stamps which meant they could not be redeemed for cash at a post office. The addition of perfins was widespread practice in Britain from the 1860s as a precaution against theft. Penny Lilac The Penny Lilac was the basic penny postage stamp of Great Britain from its first issue on 12 July 1881 and was used until 1901. It superseded the short lived Penny Venetian Red because the Customs and Inland Revenue Act of 1881 necessitated new stamps that were also valid as revenue stamps, and
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