The Most Famous Fool.?

The former King George set a world record paid for a stamp by a collector in 1904 when he was at the time the Prince of Wales. He paid $1,450 pounds for the Mauritius two pence blue stamp.

A secretary of George's had read about the sale and had remarked to him that he had read in the paper about "some darned fool" who had paid an enormous amount for a single stamp. George replied back "I am that darned fool." That Mauritius stamp is valued at 550,000 today.

At the time of King George's death in 1936, his collection had grown to 100's of albums, which were kept in a room dedicated for storing the collection in the palace. The collection now belongs to his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, who was an avid stamp collector when she was a young princess. Known as "The Royal Philatelic Collection" the collection is estimated to be valued at 400m, and is the Queen's largest single private asset.

Wow I'm speechless $400 mil what a collection

what a neat bit of philatelic trivia...you can bet I will be quotingthat info as often as possible without sounding like a broken record or dare I say some darned fool...

I'd love to sneak into THAT collection just once and dig through all the albums... pre 1900, at least
Must be a really amazing collection.

Things we have never dreamed of seeing...but alas we dream

I can't even imagine what it would contain. It would be a sight to behold.

Maybe we should have paid off our tea tax in stamps?

I swoon just thinking of what must be in that collection

you can get an idea of the sheer size of the collection here: http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page4979.asp

Put that and the Smithsonian collections together and I'm surprised that there's anything left for the rest of us.