The Penny Black Stamp Store: World's Most Expensive Stamps

Thursday, 16 February 2012

World's Most Expensive Stamps

In 2010, the Treskilling Yellow made the record for the most expensive stamp ever sold. It was thought the Swedish rectangular treasure went for £1.6million, though it has never been confirmed. The world's most valuable object by weight, the first owner is said to have been a Swedish schoolboy, who found it in 1885 among a pile of letters left by his grandparents. The Treskilling Yellow is 'one of about a half dozen highly notorious stamps in the world,' according to noted U.S. stamp expert Robert Odenweller. Others include the 1856 British Guiana 1 cent Magenta which has been locked away in a vault since 1980 when it was bought for nearly one million US dollars by chemicals fortune heir John du Pont. Another is the 2 Penny Post Office Mauritius Blue that sold for £970,000 in 1993.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2101520/Penny-Red-rare-imperfections-set-sell-550-000-auction.html#ixzz1mabLsEfR

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A Brief History

Before 1st May 1840, posting a letter was a very complicated and expensive affair. It could cost the equivalent of a days wage, and it was charged by how many sheets of paper were used and how far it had to travel. Normally the recipient had to pay the cost.

Sir Roland Hill was responsible for reforming the British postal system, and as part of this a competition was held for the public to design the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. However none of the entries were thought suitable, so instead they used the profile sketch of a then 15 year old Queen Victoria. This image was used on stamps until the end of her reign. Because the Penny Black was the first postage stamp in the world, it did not show a country of origin, and to this day British stamps are the only stamps in the world that do not state what country they are from.

However, the Penny Black only remained in circulation for a year, as it was soon found that it was possible to remove the ink of the red cancellation mark and re-use the stamp, so the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and black cancellation ink.