The Most Expensive Stamps Ever Sold

On This Page

• Two records, not one
• The results
• What the certificate says
• Its owners
• The forger who was too good
• Corrections
• What I make of it
• Top Takeaways to Success
• Frequently Asked Questions

The most valuable stamp in the world sold twice. The second time, it made less.

The British Guiana 1c magenta realised $9,480,000 at Sotheby’s New York on 17 June 2014. Every list of the most expensive stamps still prints that figure as the current record.

On 8 June 2021 the same stamp sold again, at the same auction house, for $8,307,000.

It had been estimated at $10 to $15 million and missed its low estimate by $1.7 million. The seller, Stuart Weitzman, had paid the 2014 price. He took a nominal loss of $1,173,000, about 12.4 percent over seven years, before fees on both transactions and before inflation.

It was the first time in the stamp’s recorded history that it changed hands for less than at its previous sale.

Two records, not one

Single stamp: $9,480,000. The 2014 British Guiana result, still unbeaten by any individual stamp.

Philatelic item: EUR 10,027,800. The Mauritius Ball cover, an 1847 invitation to a ball given by Lady Gomm, bearing the one penny and two pence Post Office stamps. Sold by Auktionshaus Christoph Gärtner of Ludwigsburg on 26 June 2021, at its fiftieth anniversary sale, to an unnamed collector in Europe.

That figure needs its parts stated. The hammer was EUR 8,100,000, and a 23.8 percent buyer’s premium takes it to EUR 10,027,800. It became the first philatelic item to pass ten million dollars.

So the honest comparison is awkward. The Ball cover beats the magenta on realised price. On hammer, nobody can say, because Sotheby’s has never published the magenta’s hammer figure.

The results

Prices realised unless the row says otherwise.

#	Item	Origin	Price	Sale
1	Mauritius Ball cover	Mauritius, 1847	EUR 10,027,800	Christoph Gärtner, 26 Jun 2021
2	British Guiana 1c magenta	Br. Guiana, 1856	$9,480,000	Sotheby’s NY, 17 Jun 2014, lot 1
3	British Guiana 1c magenta, resale	Br. Guiana, 1856	$8,307,000	Sotheby’s NY, 8 Jun 2021, lot 3
4	Mauritius Bordeaux cover	Mauritius, 1847	CHF 5,750,000	David Feldman, Geneva, 1993
5	Inverted Jenny plate block of four	US, 1918	above $4,800,000	Private, Mystic Stamp Co, 2014
6	1c Z Grill, Gross collection	US, 1868	$4,366,000	Siegel, 14 to 15 Jun 2024
7	Inverted Jenny plate block	US, 1918	$2,970,000	Siegel, 19 Oct 2005
8	Treskilling Yellow	Sweden, 1855	CHF 2,875,000	David Feldman, Geneva, 1996
9	Dawson cover, Hawaiian Missionaries	Hawaii, 1851	$2,240,000	Private, 2013
10	Dawson cover	Hawaii, 1851	$2,090,000	Siegel, 1995
11	Inverted Jenny, position 49	US, 1918	$2,006,000	Siegel, 8 Nov 2023
12	The Whole Country is Red	China, 1968	CNY 13,800,000	China Guardian, Nov 2018
13	Inverted Jenny, position 49	US, 1918	$1,593,000	Siegel, 2018
14	Baden 9 kreuzer error, on cover	Baden, 1851	EUR 1,524,601	Heinrich Köhler, Jun 2019
15	Alexandria Blue Boy cover	US, 1847	$1,180,000	H.R. Harmer, 2019, lot 1
16	British Guiana 1c magenta	Br. Guiana, 1856	$935,000	17 Jun 1980
17	1c Z Grill	US, 1868	$935,000	Siegel, 1998
18	2c Hawaiian Missionary, Gross	Hawaii, 1851	$619,500	Siegel, Oct 2018

No stamp sale above $500,000 could be found in 2025 or 2026. The most recent major result is the Gross collection at Siegel in June 2024, which took $19,201,550 in total.

What the certificate says

Here is the detail that ought to be on every page about this stamp and is on almost none.

The British Guiana carries certificates from the Royal Philatelic Society London, from 1935 and from 2014. The 2014 certificate records that surface rubbing was reduced by over-painting at some time in the past, possibly during its ownership by Philipp von Ferrary in the early twentieth century.

Sotheby’s published that on its own lot page. The most valuable stamp in the world has been painted on, the fact is disclosed, and it is absent from the coverage.

Its owners

The provenance is unusually complete for an object this old, because every step was documented.

A schoolboy, L. Vernon Vaughan, found it in 1873 and sold it for six shillings. It passed to a dealer for £120 as part of a collection, then to Ferrary for about £150. The Ferrary estate sale in Paris in April 1922 took 300,000 francs at hammer.

A private sale in 1940, arranged through Macy’s, brought $40,000. Then $280,000 in 1970, and $935,000 in June 1980, to John du Pont.

Du Pont owned it for the rest of his life. In 1996 he shot and killed the Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz, and in 1997 was found guilty but mentally ill of third-degree murder. He died in prison in December 2010. The stamp is believed to have sat in a bank vault throughout. His estate consigned it to Sotheby’s in 2014.

Stanley Gibbons bought it in 2021 and then did something new with it: fractionalised ownership into 80,000 non-tradable shares through its Showpiece platform, and put the stamp in a zero-oxygen frame in London.

The forger who was too good

Philately’s authenticity problem has a name.

Jean de Sperati produced forgeries so accomplished that two separate expert panels certified them as genuine. Facing a smuggling charge, he defended himself by producing four more copies in court to demonstrate that the items were his own work, and was convicted in April 1948 of the lesser offence of fraud.

In 1954 the British Philatelic Association bought his entire remaining stock and his printing plates, reportedly for around $40,000, specifically to keep them off the market. Sperati forgeries are now collected in their own right.

The Treskilling Yellow carries a live version of the same problem. Experts have argued its colour was produced by bleaching a genuine green three-skilling and recolouring it. The Swedish Postal Museum declared it a fake at one point and later retracted, after two independent examinations found it genuine. When it was re-offered in 2010 the price was never disclosed, the seller saying only that it made at least its 1996 figure.

Corrections

The Ball cover’s EUR 8.1 million is the hammer, not the sale price. I began this page carrying that error myself. Realised was EUR 10,027,800.

The 2014 magenta made $9,480,000, not $9.5 million. A twenty thousand dollar rounding that has been copied everywhere.

Do not quote a hammer for either magenta sale. Sotheby’s published totals only, and outlets reporting “a final bid of $8.3 million” alongside “$8,307,000 including premium” cannot both be right.

The British Guiana is not the most expensive philatelic item. It has not been since June 2021, and the claim appears without qualification constantly.

What I make of it

Stamps are the smallest market in this section and the best documented. Siegel publishes catalogues with prices realised going back to 1996, free and fully searchable. Spink has 280,000 archived lots. That is better disclosure than the watch, car or jewellery trades manage.

Which makes the central fact harder to explain away. A well-documented market, with expert certification, complete provenance and public results, still produced a headline record that was quietly beaten downwards seven years later and has been reported ever since as though it stands.

My read is that the 2021 result is the more honest number and the more useful one. The 2014 sale had a Hollywood quality: a legendary rarity, a fashion designer buying it, a murderer’s estate selling it. The 2021 sale was the same object in front of the same kind of room, and the room said eight million.

For more record prices, see the most expensive things ever sold.