Unique One Cent British Guiana Up For Auction

It appears to have been trimmed & cleaned.

"Better living through chemistry"

"The miracles of science"

The stamp was 8-sided when it was first discovered by L.Vernon Vaughan, a young boy, in 1873. It was he who soaked it off the cover he found whilst looking through old family letters. He had just started collecting.

The rest is history, as they say.

Surely a more fascinating story about a piece of paper cannot be found.

Londonbus1

I'm sorry but that stamp is in terrible condition and is not worth 10-20 million despite its rarity. Let's wait and see what the auction fetches!

Yeah, it sure doesn't LOOK like it is worth spit, does it?? Prime example of something being valued primarily on rarity, not looks. I guess that is why one piece of antique furniture may look better than a plainer one, but is worth less.

I wonder how much the trimmed off pieces would sell for at auction? They can't look much worse than what's left of the stamp.

k

Per Ken Lawrence at the Frajola Board:
Doubts about its authenticity have been raised by experts ever since the 1880s, and were widely expressed at the time of the Ferrary sale. The most comprehensive debate was in 1951, between Sir John Wilson, who had chaired the RPSL Expert Committee when it was certified, and Maurice Burrus, who argued that it was an altered 4¢. (The stamp submitted by David Feldman for Peter Winter was certified in 1999 or 2000 as an altered 4¢.) Wilson agreed that it probably should be re-checked with modern scientific equipment which had been unavailable to him in the 1930s, but unless it has been certified recently for this sale, it has not been expertized for about 80 years.

I have heard this story from others in the philatelic community as well.

just a video update on the British stamp up for auction as well as the other most expensive stamp.

http://money.msn.com/money-video?vi...=en-us_money

Is it just my imagination, or does the older clearer picture actually have a fatter less crisp pen cancel?? it seems that the current picture has the pen lines less fuzzy, more crisp, especially the "w" tail and the underscore. maybe it's just me though. the older picture looks like a standard pen fuzzy ink "bleed" at the edges

the right edge may have been trimmed from the older ragged picture, but how can one trim off an edge yet leave more stamp there. the older ragged pic clearly shows the one cent as being cut into (no bottom of the O or E in ONE), yet it seems that the newer auction pic shows a straight edge, but with complete writing of the one cent faded though it is. and no I'm not looking at the big Jumbo square guiana..*L*