Existing comment:
Timeline of a Rarity
1838: The British colony of Demerara in South America is joined with neighboring possessions to form British Guiana.
1856: The postmaster of British Guiana's capital, Georgetown, runs low on postage tamps and asks a local printer to prepare one-cent and four-cent stamps for provisional use until a shipment arrives from England. The One-Cent Magenta is used on April 4.
1873: Twelve-year-old stamp collector Louis Vernon Vaughn discovers the One-Cent Magenta among some old papers at his uncle's home in British Guiana. Unhappy with its appearance, he sells it for six shillings and buys a packet of prettier foreign stamps.
1878: The wealthy collector COunt Philipp von Ferrary purchases the stamp for a sum thought to be 40 pounds. It will not emerge from his vast Paris estate for nearly 40 years.
1917: Ferrary dies at the age of 67. His massive stamp collection is willed to the Berlin postal museum. However, because France and Germany are at war, his stamp collection are seized a few years later by the French government as enemy property and sold to pay off German war reparations.
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1940: Ann Hind exhibits the stamp in the British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, and shortly thereafter sells it to an anonymous buyer for $45,000.
1954: LIFE pictures the One-Cent Magenta in color for the first time. Its ownership remains shrouded in mystery, and the magazine claims that even the owner's wife does not know he possesses the stamp.
1966: British Guiana achieves independence and becomes the Republic of Guyana.
One of the first stamps issued by newly-independent Guyana pictures the One-Cent Magenta.
1970: Frederick T. Small, an Australian living in Florida, is identified as the stamp's owner when he sells it for $280,000 to a group of investors headed b Pennsylvania stamp dealer Irwin Weinberg, who spends the next decade promoting it with theatrical flair.
Irwin Weinberg steps into an armored car with a briefcase containing the One-Cent Magenta handcuffed to his wrist, Philadelphia, 1976. |