Postage stamp stamps did not need to show the issuing country, so no country name was included on them. The UK remains the only country to omit its name on postage stamps, using the reigning monarch’s head as country identification. Following the introduction of the postage stamp in the UK, prepaid postage considerably increased the number of letters mailed. Before 1839, the number of letters sent in the UK was typically 76 million. By 1850 this increased five-fold to 350 million, continuing to grow rapidly until the end of the 20th century when newer methods of indicating the payment of postage reduced
Postage stamps and postal history of Mexico Just as there is no consensus on what constitutes "classic stamps" in general, there is no agreement on what is the "classic period" for stamps of Mexico. In 1926, Samuel Chapman in his "The Postage Stamps of Mexico", referred to the "provisional period" as running from 1856 to 1868. In 1983, Schatzkès & Schimmer published a study of "the Cancellations of Mexico from 1856-1874", but they did not specifically call that the "classic period." Pulver in his "Introduction to the Stamps of Mexico" (1992) included a chapter entitled "Classic Era 1856-1883." Including 1883 as the end of the classic period