t's been called the most valuable item in the world by weight. The British Guiana One-Cent Magenta just became the most expensive stamp ever sold.
The stamp,weighing just 0.04 grams, was auctioned by Sotheby's Tuesday, bringing in $9.48 million, just shy of the price rangeexpected by Sotheby's experts, but still enough to break the world record.
The history of this stamp is famous among collectors:
In 1856, a postmaster in British Guiana (now Guyana, on the northern coast of South America), ran out of stamps, and the shipment of a new batch was late.
He asked a local newspaper to print an emergency issue of several stamps to hold him over. Among them was the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, and only one of its kind is still known to exist today.
The stamp was first discovered by a 12-year-old boy in 1873, 17 years after it was printed. The boy, a stamp collector himself, couldn't find a reference to the stamp in his catalog and sold it for six shillings -- about $50 today.
After that, the stamp passed through several owners for nearly the next century, until it was bought by American millionaire (and convicted murderer) John E. du Pont, who snapped it up for $935,000 in 1980.
He died in prison in 2010, and his estate brought the stamp to auction.
The stamp,weighing just 0.04 grams, was auctioned by Sotheby's Tuesday, bringing in $9.48 million, just shy of the price rangeexpected by Sotheby's experts, but still enough to break the world record.
The history of this stamp is famous among collectors:
In 1856, a postmaster in British Guiana (now Guyana, on the northern coast of South America), ran out of stamps, and the shipment of a new batch was late.
He asked a local newspaper to print an emergency issue of several stamps to hold him over. Among them was the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, and only one of its kind is still known to exist today.
The stamp was first discovered by a 12-year-old boy in 1873, 17 years after it was printed. The boy, a stamp collector himself, couldn't find a reference to the stamp in his catalog and sold it for six shillings -- about $50 today.
After that, the stamp passed through several owners for nearly the next century, until it was bought by American millionaire (and convicted murderer) John E. du Pont, who snapped it up for $935,000 in 1980.
He died in prison in 2010, and his estate brought the stamp to auction.
