The world of using stamps may seem to be so last-century when it comes to daily usage of mail in a world dominated by email, messengers, texts and digital prints on boxes and parcels. When it comes to collectibles as an alternative assets class, collectors and investors alike can still spends countless thousands of dollars getting some of the prized stamps of the world.

Collectors Dashboard routinely tracks upcoming auctions and ongoing sales within all sectors of collectibles, and the world’s most valuable stamp is about to find a new owner. This is the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta stamp. There is only one of its kind.

Sotheby’s will auction the most valuable stamp on June 8, 2021. The British Guiana One-Cent Magenta is already a one-of-a-kind asset and it has a storied past. Any collector, and all investors, should be intrigued about this monumental sale.

The British Guiana One-Cent Magenta has most recently been owned by fashion mogul Stuart Weitzman. He paid a record $9.5 million to get it in 2014.

The stamp only became available because its previous owner died in prison for murder. Again, this unique stamp has a very intriguing past.

The deceased John du Pont was shown to have paid $935,000 for the stamp at a Siegel auction all the way back in 1980. The sale marked the last time the one-of-a-kind stamp would sell for anything under $1 million dollars.

Edmond D. Wight was the postal clerk on British-ruled Guiana in 1855 when only 5,000 stamps on an order of 50,000 arrived from Great Britain according to SmithsonianMag.com.

Using the local newspaper as a resource, the Royal Gazette printer was able to crudely fashion something that resembled what they were missing. The 1856 one-cent stamps were used for the newspapers. In 1873, that’s where the only known example was found by a young stamp collecting enthusiast named Vernon Vaughan, and it turned out that Vaughan was younger than the stamp he found. It was reported that he quickly sold it for a mere six shillings at the time.

The British Guiana One-Cent Magenta stamp wound up being donated to the Berlin Postal museum in 1917. Shortly after World War 1, this stamp was seized along with the rest of the collection by France as war reparations.

The French asset seizure lead to its first encounter with the United States in the form of ownership by New York textile magnet Arthur Hind.

The reverence of such a unique well-documented treasure will help remove any skeptics to how it will sell this summer. The stamp was meant to imitate the design of British issue and one that was printed with the colony’s Latin motto “we give and we ask in return”. A crude three-massed ship is perhaps the most valuable amateur doodle to fetch such high prices. A crude three-massed ship printed on the most valuable stamp in the world.

Collectors Dashboard would also point that investors and collectors alike are going to be intrigued by another items being sold by Mr. Weitzman — The famous Inverted Jenny stamp!