Could you imagine paying $20 million for just one item? Maybe if that one thing was a house or a plane or the Ark of the Covenant I spend that type of money, but a stamp? Wow. However, $20 million is actually the amount that the world’s most valuable stamp is going to be auctioned for later this month.
The image above is of an employee of Sotheby’s auction house holding a case containing the sole-surviving “British Guiana One-Cent Magenta” stamp. This stamp dates back to 1856 and is such a unique find (hence why there is only one remaining) that it is expected to fetch 20 million U.S. dollars when it is auctioned in New York on June 17, 2014.
The “British Guiana One-Cent Magenta” stamp was first discovered in 1873 by a 12-year old Scottish boy living in British Guiana, South America. The boy sold it to a local stamp collector for several shillings, and over time, due to its age and rarity, this stamp that was sold for barely anything is now worth millions.
Stamp collecting is obviously a huge part of all cultures throughout the world, but there is something truly special about the “British Guiana One-Cent Magenta” stamp. After doing some research about the rarest and most expensive stamps in the world, I found that the closest one in worth to the “Magenta” stamp is the “Treskilling Yellow” stamp, which is approximately worth between 3-4 million U.S. dollars.
While still quite the valuable postage stamp, the disparity in how much the “Treskilling Yellow” is valued at versus how much the “British Guiana One-Cent Magenta” is going for at auction truly shows how priceless the “Magenta” stamp is. It’ll be interesting to see how much the highest bidder actually pays for it at the auction in New York later this month.
Photo by Joern Pollex/Getty Images
