1c Magenta and Inverted Jenny Plate Block to be Auctioned

The 1c magenta has been significantly digitally enhanced far beyond non-recognition! Not a grammatical typo. Last time I saw the stamp in person, the room was intentionally poorly lit to prevent further degradation. It had lost a small chunk of paper, almost all of its color had faded, as well as part of the printing. Really, the only thing you could clearly see was the pen cancel, part of the rectangular border, and a bunch of dark areas that were a mix of the original design and just plain dark spots on the paper.

I think John Dupont left it out on his table a little too long using it as a drink coaster.

You can barely tell it's a ship design in the archival digitally enhanced pic -- can't tell at all what it is in person. Quite frankly, it looked like a squished spider in the display. History or no history, I'm not paying $10 million plus for it even if I had the cash to burn (I mean seriously, for that amount of money you could buy a round of for a LOT of thirsty people!). Got my priorities straight, man.

The inverted plate number Jenny block, yeah, I'd pay $5 million for it -- I mean, look at the number on the selvedge! Obviously the suggested retail price is $8.493 million.

If anyone is interested in a detailed history of the 1c Magenta, might I suggest getting a copy of The One-Cent Magenta: Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World by James Barron. They are available on eBay quite cheaply.



A good resource for those interested in the Inverted Jenny is The Inverted Jenny: Money, Mystery, Mania by George Amick. They are also available on eBay quite cheaply.

I don’t quite understand the allure of the 1c Magenta. I realize that there is only one of them and that, in and of itself, makes it valuable, but there is another stamp, equally as rare, that gets very little fanfare.

The Swedish Treskilling Yellow, from 1855, was an error in color and, so far as is known, only one copy exists and it has graced the collections of such notable philatelists as  Philipp von Ferrary and King Carol of Romania. Still, it doesn’t have the notoriety of the 1c Magenta, nor has it fetched the prices of the stamp from British Guiana.

The Treskilling Yellow did set a record price for a stamp in 1996, when David Feldman auctioned it in Geneva for $2.3 million. Feldman again auctioned it in 2010, where it sold "for at least the $2.3 million price it set a record for in 1996.” It again changed hands in 2013 for an undisclosed price. The 1c Magenta, on the other hand, sold at Sotheby’s in New York on July 17, 2014 for $9.5 million.

I don’t know about you guys, but I would much rather have a Treskilling Yellow. At least it looks like a stamp, not some bit of paper that got stuck to the bottom of your shoe while walking through a parking lot.

More about the Treskilling Yellow can be found here.

Elsewhere, twitter I think, saw that the back of the not so magenta stamp has new graffiti on... a boot?

For those who haven’t heard, position #77 of the #C3a inverted Jenny realized $800,000 in the March 31 Siegel auction. This was the hammer price and doesn’t include the buyer’s premium or taxes. We’ll have to wait until June 8 to see how much the British Guiana 1c Magenta and the Inverted Jenny plate block bring in the Sotheby’s auction.

Well, it looks as though the 1c Magenta only fetched $8.307,000, far below expectations and over $1 million less than Stuart Weitzman gave for it back in June of 2014. I wonder if the drop in price has anything to do with Weitzman having defaced the stamp with his initials and an outline of a shoe? I sincerely hope so because, maybe then, future owners of philatelic rarities will think twice before doing anything so foolish! 

NPR story here.

The #C3a Inverted Jenny plate block brought $4.87 million.

Linn’s story here.

It’s just as well, because stampie78 didn’t have any WD-40 to put on the hinges of his coin purse in order to get it open if he had won! 

If you're like me, you have more pills than coins. With the cost of pills these days, I wonder if they will start accepting pill bids?