Stamp Champions: Famous Costly Stamps - Part II

In addition to those we talked about in the last blog, there are other famous stamps that are rare and wonderful. Some of these are:

1855 Treskilling Banco Yellow – Probably the most famous of all stamps. This one was a printing mistake. The stamp was first noticed by a 14-year old kid who was looking at his grandfather’s stamp collection. There is only one known to exist, making it the rarest stamp in the world!

1856 British Guiana One Cent Black on Magenta – Like the Treskilling Yellow, this stamp from the British colony of Guiana is extremely rare. There were so few stamps in Guiana at that time that they were hand-initiated by the post-office employee. The stamp itself is unusual in that it is a rectangle with clipped corners. One of these stamps sold 25 years ago for $935,000!

1867 Z-Grills – These stamps are from the US and have a picture of Benjamin Franklin the first US postmaster on an ornately imprinted “grill” of what looks like “Z’s”. The pattern was to stop people from counterfeiting the stamps, like the fancy filigree printing found on US paper currency. Only two of these stamps are known.