
The stamp was sold by shoe designer and collector Stuart Weitzman The designer had bought it in 2014 for US$9.5 million and continued a tradition started by previous owners by adding his own flourish – a line drawing of a stiletto shoe and his initials – to the back of the stamp.
The buyer of the stamp wished to remain anonymous, Sotheby’s said.
The Inverted Jenny, which was last sold at auction some 26 years ago for $2.9 million, is a collector’s item because of a printing error in which its biplane design appears upside down.
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A recent Stabroek News editorial on the One Cent Black on Magenta stamp follows:
(Published on May 14, 2021)
It would perhaps surprise younger Guyanese to know that the heritage item originating from this country that is most internationally famous is a tiny, octagonal piece of paper which the majority of them would have tossed in the rubbish had they encountered it in the course of their daily activities. Since the new generation spends much of its time with social media, WhatsApp and emails, the notion of a stamp must seem a rather alien concept, representing as it does a throwback to a bygone era when snail mail was all the rage. But in the specialised universe of philatelists there is a stamp which commands attention from all collectors without exception as well as from every serious media house on the planet. It is the rarest stamp in the world, and it comes from Guyana.
It is called the One Cent Black on Magenta, and its unprepossessing appearance notwithstanding, according to the Guardian it is expected to fetch anything up to US$15 million when it goes to auction on June 8th in New York. Its rarity is a consequence of the fact that it is the only one of its kind, and given the climatic conditions in this country and our casual approach to preservation, it is perhaps something of a miracle that it survived at all. To give some comparative idea of its value, perhaps, the online edition of the newspaper included a photograph of someone reading Shakespeare’s First Folio, representing an original copy of his collected works from 1623 which sold in 2020 for US$9.97 million. Only six complete copies of this are known to exist, and it is the most expensive work of printed literature ever sold at auction.
It is no doubt difficult for citizens here to conceptualise just how much excitement the occasional appearance of the Magenta generates, but according to the Guardian “the stamp is something of a Holy Grail.” It quoted David Beech, a philatelic expert who saw the stamp at an exhibition in Brussels in 1972: “You viewed the thing inside a small safe and there was a queue of people. It was a bit like seeing the crown jewels, you had about five seconds to peer into this dark safe.” The Magenta has been sold at auction four times, and on each occasion it has secured a record price for a stamp.
Townsend and Howe relate the story of how the stamp was discovered, quoting an A D Ferguson, a leading philatelist in the then colony, who provided an account in the British Guiana Philatelic Journal (yes, Guyana once had its own philatelic journal). It was a 12-year-old schoolboy named Vernon Vaughan who started collecting stamps in 1872 who first came across it on a letter sheet the following year when searching through family papers for stamps. It seems he was not impressed by it, but nevertheless put it in his stamp album all the same. Subsequently, he decided to take a stamp out of the album to sell, and picked out the Magenta as the one he cared least about.
Thereafter, the Guardian takes up the question of ownership, relating that France seized the collection from Berlin in 1920 and sold it at auction. The proceeds from the sale were deducted from the amount Germany owed in war reparations to the allies. The newspaper described how the world greatest collectors sent representatives to the auction in 1922, which was won by the industrialist Arthur Hind, who made a fortune in the US manufacturing upholstery fabrics.
Later owners included an Australian engineer named Frederick T Small, while in 1980 an anonymous bidder bought the stamp for US$935,000. The Guardian says the purchaser turned out to be the millionaire John de Pont, who was convicted of murdering the wrestler Dave Schultz and later died in prison. The present owner is shoe designer Stuart Weitzmann.
Inevitably, perhaps, since this was the only one of its kind, there were accusations last century that the stamp was a fake if not an outright forgery, but this was eventually debunked after the Magenta was submitted to an expert committee in 1937. According to Townsend and Howe, in the course of its investigations the committee retained a photographic expert, Colonel Mansfield, who had often testified as an expert witness in court cases where documents were alleged to have been altered. He had no doubt that the Magenta had not been subject to any alterations.
Citizens here are probably wondering why a stamp being auctioned in New York should be of any concern here. After all, although it is from Guyana they probably think that it is not of Guyana, more especially since it is unlikely it will fall into the hands of any Guyanese multi-millionaire philatelist any time soon; after all that is a genus which belongs in a world of fantasy. For all of that the Magenta does represent a tiny example of this country’s heritage, even although it escaped these shores many moons ago.
In fact, one is probably justified in claiming that it survived precisely because it escaped these shores many moons ago. Had it remained here it would have been eaten by bookworm, have crumbled into dust or been actively destroyed. We have had a very cavalier approach to our material heritage, both large and small, over the centuries, and modern governments have shown no inclination to remedy that failing.
We have been little better where the built heritage is concerned, destroying so many of the structures which have given our urban areas in particular their character. And since our governments appear blessed with no imagination, our spaces are being filled with edifices which have no link to our unique building traditions, or to the local people who created them dating back to slavery times, and who then proceeded to enhance their style during the indentureship period. From the Cheddi Jagan airport to Mahaica, we might as well be living in small-town, mid-West America.
So perhaps we should look at what the Guardian calls “the most valuable object in the world” in terms of its “size, weight and material”, not with detached eyes, but with a certain respect, since whatever its peregrinations around the world of millionaires, it is still a part of our heritage. Let it serve to remind us as to what we should be doing in terms of heritage preservation and conservation so we will have a link to our past in all its aspects, and will be able to make it meaningful. Every nation has a heritage, and we have a duty to look after ours.