Photo credit: The Gryphon’s Nest
It may not be as flashy as the Golden Concept Diamond Edition Apple Watch, but the British Guiana One-Cent Black on Magenta stamp from 1856 is currently the world’s most expensive object by weight. Only a single copy is known to exist and it sold for a whopping $9.5-million USD back in 2014 to an anonymous buyer.
What makes it so special? Well, it was first printed 16 years after the introduction of postage stamps when the postmaster in British Guiana (now Guyana) faced a stamp shortage. He requested the colony’s newspaper to print an emergency supply while awaiting a shipment of stamps from London. Unfortunately, the postmaster was displeased with the printing quality, so he asked each postal clerk to initial the stamps upon sale to prevent fraud, and that explains the April 4, 1856 postmark with the ‘EDW’ initials for E.D. Wright from the town of Demerara.
It has always been the world’s most famous stamp. It is one of these objects around which a huge mystique has grown up over the years. The stamp was also examined by Thomas Lera, the Winton S. Blount Research Chair of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, on 17 April 2014, and several photographs taken by Mr. Lera are reproduced in the catalogue,” said David Redden, Worldwide Chairman of Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s.
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