| New York (Wall Street Journal) – Owners of the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, one of the most valuable stamps in the world, have included a 12-year-old Scottish schoolboy, an Austrian nobleman and an American chemical heir found guilty of murder.The stamp comes up for sale on June 17 at Sotheby’s in New York, the auction house is set for today. Sotheby’s has priced the object to sell for more than $10 million. Weighing 0.001 ounce, the faded piece of paper would cost a bidder at least $1 million per ten-thousandth of an ounce to own.A copy of the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent MagentaThe only one known to exist, the stamp has been an elusive trophy. It last sold in 1980 for $935,000 to John E. du Pont, whose estate is now trying to unload the asset. Mr. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, died in 2010 in prison after being found guilty but mentally ill on a charge of third-degree murder in the shooting death of an Olympic wrestler he had befriended.If successful, the sale would make the British Guiana the world’s most expensive stamp at auction. Irwin Weinberg, an 86-year-old stamp dealer who bought the British Guiana in 1970 with a group of investors for $280,000, called the stamp “ugly,” “faded”—and altogether life-changing. Asked how he felt the moment he acquired it, he replied, “Euphoric.” Then he spelled the word forward and backward to underscore his point.Part of the stamp’s value lies in its lore. When Mr. Weinberg toured the stamp at exhibitions, he locked it in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. On a trip to Toronto, he said, the handcuff key broke in the lock,Cheap NBA Jerseys, and a saw-wielding firefighter had to hack it off him. Mr. Weinberg said when he delivered the object to Mr. du Pont in 1980, the new owner marked the moment by taking them both on a helicopter ride in New York and ordering the pilot to spin around the Statue of Liberty’s torch for fun.Because of its rarity, the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta has set a record for a stamp at auction every time it has sold. If another one is uncovered,David De Gea Jersey, collectors could always take their cue from upstate New York textile magnate Arthur Hind, who purchased the stamp in the 1920s. Folklore has it that Hind bought a second British Guiana and promptly burned it with his cigar match in front of the seller, thus ensuring the surviving stamp’s value.The stamp for sale at Sotheby’s was discovered in 1873 by a Scottish 12-year-old living in British Guiana, now the South American nation of Guyana. After finding the item in some family papers, he sold it to a local dealer for several shillings. The stamp’s subsequent adventures include getting seized by France as part of World War I reparations and becoming ensnarled in a lawsuit in the 1930s. According to Sotheby’s, it is the only British Colonial stamp missing from the royal collection of Queen Elizabeth II, whose grandfather,Raekwon McMillan Jersey, King George V, was a collector.The stamp has surfaced in pop culture, too,Joe Gomez Liverpool Jersey, appearing in a 1952 Donald Duck comic book and garnering a mention in the 1973 John D. MacDonald stamp-collecting mystery “The Scarlet Ruse.” “You think all this stamp stuff is like bubble-gum wrappers, like maybe baseball cards, trade three of your players for one of mine,Luca Antonelli Jersey,” a hardened stamp dealer says in the novel. “It doesn’t seem like grown-ups, right? Let me show you how grown-up it can get, okay?”The current auction record for a single stamp belongs to the Swedish Treskilling Yellow, which was mistakenly printed the color of french fry oil instead of its intended blue. That stamp, which sold in Zurich for more than $2 million in 1996, is also known to be a one-of-a-kind.The market for stamps has largely been flat, though prime examples of objects from contemporary art to jewels have fetched record prices in recent years. An omnivorous trophy hunter could be drawn to the piece, along with what stamp experts estimate are a dozen philatelists world-wide with the means to bid. The best known in that group is Bill Gross, founder and chief investment officer of mutual-fund giant Pimco, with other prominent stamp collectors including Israeli businessman Joseph Hackmey. The Chinese are also getting into this category in a big way, stamp experts say, though for now most are buying only stamps from their homeland. Mr. Gross declined to comment, and attempts to reach Mr. Hackmey were unsuccessful.“While at the end of the day it is a tiny little piece of paper rather obscurely printed, it’s something altogether different—a symbol of the highest level of collecting you can possibly get in that category,” said David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s.The one-lot sale could be a 2014 highlight for Sotheby’s, which announced last month that it will pay a special dividend and may consider selling its New York headquarters as it works to fend off an assault by activist hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb. Assuming it sells,Amara Darboh Youth Jersey, Mr. Redden predicted the stamp would become the most expensive object ever at auction by weight and size. |
