April 4 marked the beginning of the adventures of the rarest stamp ever printed—the stamp of the colony of British Guiana, today the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.
original stamp
This rarity was produced in a makeshift way at a printing house in a single copy, due in part to the delay of a ship from London that was bringing postal supplies for the colonies. The octagonal “British Guiana 1c Magenta,” printed in black ink on red paper, has no perforation.
At the center of the stamp is an image of a three-masted schooner. Above and below the schooner image is the colony’s motto in Latin: Damus Petimus Que Vicissim (“We give and expect to receive”).
In 1873, a 12-year-old schoolboy found an envelope with this stamp in his father’s house and steamed it off. The boy was not particularly interested in the stamp and sold it to a neighboring philatelist for 6 shillings (about one and a half dollars at the time).
makeshift stamp
Five years later the stamp ended up in Europe, where, after a series of dramatic resales, it was purchased in 1980 for $935,000 by John du Pont—a representative of one of America’s richest industrial clans.
In 1997, du Pont was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder of Olympic freestyle wrestling champion Dave Schultz. Apparently, this unique artifact was kept in the vault of some bank while its owner served his sentence, until his death in prison in 2010. And in March 2014 it became known that this legendary and extremely rare postage stamp would be offered for sale by the auction house “Sotheby’s” in New York, at an auction held as part of the dispersal of the late multimillionaire John du Pont’s estate. “This is the most unique stamp in the world. For any collector it represents the highest pinnacle of philately,” said Sotheby’s representative David Redden at the time.
As a result, at the auction held on June 18, 2014, the 1-cent stamp was sold for $9.5 million and thus became the most expensive postage stamp in the world. Designer and shoe-company owner Stuart Weitzman bought the stamp by phone in the very first minutes after bidding began.