Rare stamp sells for record $9.5 million

It didn’t quite meet the sellers’ expectations, but the British Guiana One-Cent Black on Magenta still set a record for postage stamps when it was sold to an anonymous telephone buyer this week for $9.5 million.

The rare stamp was expected to fetch between $10 million and $20 million at the Sotheby’s auction in New York City Tuesday evening, but despite not meeting that goal, the sale shattered the record for highest amount paid for a single stamp, previously set at $5 million.

This is the fourth time the One-Cent Black on Magenta has set a world record for stamps. Every time this stamp has been auctioned off, it reset the record. 

The stamp, printed in 1856 by a newspaper in the then-colony of British Guiana and found years later by a Scottish schoolboy living there, sold in 1922 for a then-record price of $35,000.

This week’s auction was held by the estate of John E. du Pont, heir to the DuPont chemical company and convicted murderer. The death of Mr. du Pont in 2010 while serving his 30-year sentence for shooting Olympic wrestler David Schultz, led to the sale of his estate, including the prized one-inch by one-and-a-quarter-inch piece of paper.