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By Eric Shackle |
"Many feel that is the world's ugliest postage stamp ever issued," says Stampville.com "It is crudely printed, cut to shape, and heavily canceled."
Details of its history can be found on many philatelic websites. There's a wide variety of name-spelling and dates, so accuracy can't be guaranteed for this brief run-down, which shows how the stamp has been a great profit-spinner for each of its owners.
1856: When a regular shipment of stamps failed to arrive from England, the British Guiana government printers produced provisional issues of one-cent and four-cent stamps, printing them on several papers, including a few on magenta colored paper. (The dictionary defines magenta as a brilliant crimson aniline dye that was discovered soon after the battle of Magenta in northern Italy in 1859, which suggests that the printers must have had another name for it.)
1872: Penny Magenta discovered by English schoolboy Vernon Vaughan, 12, in Demerara, British Guiana (now Georgetown, Guyana), the colony's capital. He sold it to N.R. McKinnon, an avid collector for six shillings (about $1.50).
1877: Liverpool, England, dealer Thomas Ridpath bought McKinnon's collection for .
Early 20th century: Famous European stamp and coin collector, Count Philippe von Ferrari bought the prized stamp for .
1922: The count's collection sold at auction. Automobile upholstery millionaire Arthur Hind of Utica, New York, paid a then-record sum of more than $35,000 for the Penny Magenta.
1939: Frederick (or Edward) Small, an Australian business executive and collector living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, bought it from Hind's widow for an undisclosed price. He kept his ownership secret for more than 30 years.
1947 and 1956: The stamp, thought by then to be worth more than $100,000, was exhibited in special displays in New York.
1969: Small commissioned the New York City firm of Robert A. Siegel to sell it by auction. Irwin Weinberg, a rare stamp dealer of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, formed a syndicate to buy it.
1970. In a night-time auction in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, shown live on TV, Weinberg bought the stamp for $280,000. Bidding opened at $100,000 and lasted only 90 seconds. Weinberg later displayed his prize at major exhibitions around the world, carrying it in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
1980: Weinberg's syndicate sold the stamp for $935,000 (including buyer's premium) to John E. du Pont, heir to a huge fortune, whose name was kept secret. He is a great-great grandson of E. I. Du Pont who built a chemical industry empire. John's share was estimated at up to $250 million.
1986: The Penny Magenta was exhibited at the Ameripex '86 stamp show in Chicago, Illinois, watched 24 hours a day by armed guards
1996: John du Pont shot and killed David Schultz, an Olympic wrestler whom he had sponsored, with a .44-calibre handgun.
1997: Du Pont, 58, was found guilty of third-degree murder, a charge which meant he acted with malice, but without a premeditated intent to kill. He was the richest man ever to have been convicted of murder. He spent $2 million dollars on his defense, four times the cost of the prosecution. The state court jury in Media, Pennsylvania, rejected the defense plea that he was innocent by reason of insanity. They also rejected the prosecution's claim that he should get a life sentence for first-degree murder.
He was sentenced to serve between 13 and 30 years in prison. His psychiatrists argued that his disease (paranoid schizophrenia) was responsible for the Schultz killing. Instead of being jailed, he was found to be mentally ill and was sent to a hospital for the criminally insane, where he remains to this day. A detailed report can be found on the Internet at "Time Magazine".
2001: It seems that du Pont will never go to jail and will never sell that stamp.