The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, George V, had just as little chance in 1922 as allegedly two other crowned heads.
They all really wanted the brand, but in the end they were outbid by the American textile industrialist Arthur Hind.
He bought the "British Guiana 1 ¢ magenta" for $ 36,000 - which would be equivalent to about $ 600,000 today.
At the auction, the collection of what was once the world's most famous philatelist, Philipp von Ferrary, was foreclosed.
The Frenchman Ferrary, who died in 1917, had bequeathed his stamps to the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, but the collection was confiscated by the French government and after the First World War it was scattered around the world as "enemy property" at the Ferrary auction.
Peter-Philipp Schmitt
Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.
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Since then, the famous brand, which Donald Duck was after in a comic 70 years ago, has changed hands several times.
The most inconspicuous and unique piece of paper was auctioned off at Sotheby's in New York in 2014.
It took a few months to find out who had paid just under $ 9.8 million for the postage stamp: Stuart Weitzman.
Even as a child, the American shoe designer dreamed of owning the world's most expensive postage stamps and the most expensive coin on top of that.
He succeeded: In addition to the “British Guiana 1c magenta”, he also owned a block of four stamps of the “Inverted Jenny”, a misprint from 1918 in which the aircraft with the name Jenny was upside down, as well as the “St .
Gaudens Double Eagle ”from 1933. The 20-dollar gold coin is unlikely to exist, as the double-headed eagle of this year was supposed to be melted down due to the prohibition of owning gold in the United States at the time.
However, one of the mint officials kept a few to himself, which explains their great value.
The most coveted postage stamp in the world
This is exactly what is special about the “British Guiana 1c magenta” from 1856: There is only one known copy on magenta-colored paper that shows a ship and the Latin inscription “Damus Petimus Que Vicissim” (German “We give and take alternately "). Weitzman, who will be 80 years old in a few weeks and who gave up the fashion brand named after him in 2017, had the world's most coveted postage on display at the National Postal Museum in Washington. Now he had them auctioned again on Tuesday at Sotheby's in New York. Every single one of the treasures is already a star, "together they are a galaxy", the auction house announced beforehand.
The estimated values for the one-cent mark and the gold coin were each ten to 15 million dollars, the value of the block of four was given in advance at five to seven million dollars. The coin exceeded the estimated value and brought in 18,872,250 dollars, the upside down Jennys fetched 4,860,000 dollars, the "British Guiana" 8,307,000 dollars. It was initially unclear who had bought the pieces. Only one owner like? In the end they will probably never have again ?.