Stanley Gibbons Sells Britain's Most Valuable Stamp

Did anyone catch this news article from 04/26/2012?

http://www.businesslife.co/Business...p-for-550000

Interesting wt1

This is the first time I have geard of this sale.

Interesting too because one of our local members, at our last meeting actually, was giving us a breakdown on the numbers available for the Penny Blacks and Penny Reds rarities and talking about the odds of ever coming across a Plate 77 of the Penny Reds, which is one of his specialties.

Chimo

Bujutsu

how did the plate 77 become so rare since there were thousands of penny reds in circulation? Are there less than 10 in existence?

Wow! A 13.4% return. That's hard to come by, but am noting that the investor had to spend $1 million+ to achieve that potential ROI, whereas simply investing in the stock market may net you a 10% return over the medium- to long-term.

part of this comes from the fact that SG has been pushing stamps as a commodity, like stocks and bonds, and the British Govt. has been after them to stop doing it.

Some days ago I received the Newsletter of Stanley Gibbons with the news that the 1 Penny Red Plate 77 was sold for £550,000.00 to an Australian Collector!!

Regards!
Rodolfo

It's easier to supply a link to answer that question. There are plenty of links, but here's one:

http://pennystars.com/Plate-77-

However, I don't think the above link has been updated to include the recent controversy regarding the cover with THREE(!!) plate 77 penny reds.

And of course, there are also those who believe that ALL the plate 77 penny reds are fakes: http://www.collectorsclub.org/CCP/2...ate%2077.pdf

Regardless of where you stand, the plates are one of the favorites of GB collectors.

Of course, I have all the plate numbers for that penny red EXCEPT for the elusive #77. It took me less than 3 years to get them all, so it's not as hard as some might think. And if #77 is a fake (and I don't believe it is), then I actually have all the plate numbers!! (wishful thinking).

KHJ----Thanks for the link on the 77 plate ,interesting to read.

You're welcome, Floortrader!

I had some other great links on penny red, especially on the big debate on the cover find of the 3 plate 77 penny reds. Unfortunately, I lost many of my bookmarks when my laptop crashed earlier this year.

However, it shouldn't be too hard to Google them -- just takes some work to figure out which links are a good read and which aren't...

k