This is the most valuable seal in the world. Want to know why?

This bit of dirty red paper you see above is the most valuable stamp in the world, or at least next June, when it could reach $ 10-20 million in an auction.

This historic jewel is already being called “the stamp monalisa” and dates from the year 1856, when it was still worth 1 cent. The question you must be asking yourself is "why did this seal become so valuable now"?

The answer is because he is especially unique. It is the only remaining red seal of 1856 from English Guiana, now known as the Republic of Guyana (located on the north coast of South America), and is considered extremely rare.

Details

Printed in black ink on crimson paper, the seal features an image of a three-masted ship and the British Colony motto: "We give and look forward to returning" - British settlers were known to offer nothing if the other did not. were generous.

The ship itself is framed by four thin lines, with the country of issue and value written along the outer edges. All of this is almost impossible to see in the example above, but this bottom image is enhanced and does a better job of illuminating the details. Even so, the details are still hard to recognize, but everything has been identified by expert analysis.

This special seal has not been exposed to the public since 1986. Even British royalty could not take a peek and they were probably dead with curiosity, as this seal is the only major missing from the royal royal private collection.

Throughout this time, the copy was in John E. du Pont's private collection until his death in 2010. But, let's go back a little further to clarify some facts.

More history

In the early 1850s, a shipment of stamps from London to their British Guiana colony was delayed, forcing the local post office to look for a place to produce replacements. The function was handled by a local newspaper, the Royal Gazette, which was paid to produce stamps until copies of the Royal London shipment arrived.

Obviously, these stamps printed in the same place as the newspaper could lead to forgery. Therefore, to avoid this kind of thing, a postal clerk had to initial each stamp individually before it could enter circulation. And the valuable seal is one of those, being the only one left, because they were produced only for a short time until the shipment from England was released to Guyana.

First, the seal belonged to a Scottish boy, Vernon Vaughan, who saw and acquired it at the age of 12 in 1873 when he was living with his parents in former English Guiana. The boy sold it for a few bucks to a fellow Scottish man, Neil R. McKinnon, to buy more stamps. Each time he changed hands, the seal increased in value.

In the late 19th century, the stamp passed to a collector in Liverpool, who was the first to recognize its rarity and sold it for £ 120, the equivalent of about $ 20, 000 today, to Count Philippe la Renotiere von Ferrary, one of the most important stamp collectors in the world.

When the Count died, the Berlin Stamp Museum became the newest owner of the little red until the entire collection of the place was seized by France as part of the actions of World War I.

The French then sold the stamp at an auction for $ 35, 000 in 1922 (already about $ 500, 000 today). After the (very wealthy) owner who had secured the seal died, he was put up for auction again in 1970 and sold for a value of $ 1 million today. Then, in 1980, he was again awarded nearly half a million more by John E. du Pont.

Crime

However, du Pont, heir to the eponymous chemical company's fortune, died in prison in 2010 while serving time for shooting the Olympic champion and long-time friend David Schultz in 1996. Although morbid, it is notorious that this occurrence helped in the seal appreciation process, which may reach a record value in June this year.

According to the Gizmodo website, there is even a movie about the same murder scheduled to open in the United States in late 2014, starring Channing Tatum as Schultz and Steve Carrell as the insane stamp lover, du Pont.