Freaks & Errors: A Rare Collection (2017) - full transcript

Back in 1856,

this British Guiana stamp was
worth one penny,

and in 1970 it was bought for
$284,000.

Today, this one-of-a-kind was
sold again,

and as Gerald Harrington
reports,

it was for a whole lot
more than that.

[Harrington]
The stamp auction drew nearly

a thousand collectors
and investors,

and bidding was brisk on most of
the 424 lots auctioned off.

The stamp that promised to draw
the most attention and money

was the one-of-a-kind
British Guiana one-center.



Pennsylvania collector Irwin
Weinberg paid a record $280,000

for the British Guiana
ten years ago.

He said he bought it as a hedge
against inflation

and that inflation is here.

As the sale drew near,

Weinberg was philosophical about
parting with his stamp.

A postage stamp is not
a human being.

And uh, you really have to
be reasonable,

and you've had your pleasure.

And, uh, who knows?

Uh, I'm not, I'm not young,
but I'm not really old.

It's not impossible that someday
I might own it again.

[man]
I think that in a lifetime,

if you have more than
one great idea,



uh, you'd probably go down
as a genius.

I only ever had
one great idea.

That was it.

[music plays]

[Neil Steinberg]
The idea of stamps is that they were

your introduction
to the world,

And that great men--

you know, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was a stamp collector.

The vibrant activity
of active men

when they weren't traveling
the world, climbing peaks,

we're collecting stamps from
the great nations.

I think it speaks
to the yearning

for the past that people have.

When I started, I was a little boy
in Berea, Ohio, you know, in the '60s,

and you go to Woolworth's and
they have those packages,

you know, 500 stamps of the
world or whatever,

and you start to get them
and sort them

and see the ones you like,

and you have the big generic
book of world stamps.

You get your little hinges and
you put them in,

and it's a very controlled task.

And when you think
about being,

let's say eight
or nine years old,

there's not a lot of worlds
that you can control, really.

Your life is in someone else's
hands,

you go to school, and so it's,
it's, it's the first

sort of private, interior life

that a child can have,
at least for me.

And as I got to be 10 and 12,

I would then go off to the
department stores,

which in Cleveland were
May Company and Higbee's and Halle's,

and they had these wonderful
stamp departments.

[news reporter] What's the product?
It's one that holds

enrapturing fascination for the
more than 12,000,000 Americans

who enjoy the nation's most
popular hobby, stamp collecting.

So avidly do these hobbyists
pursue their avocation that

a whole industry has developed
for the purpose of cataloging,

expertizing, reporting,
buying, selling

and otherwise dealing in or
with posting stamps.

I was always very daunted
by the expanse of it.

I was never going to buy,
I didn't have a ton of money.

I'm a child, right?
I had a paper route.

But, at the time, it was this
wonderful place where you can

pay money and get these stamps
that you saw in Scott's

that was so wonderful to have,

and you would aspire to that and
that's why you were working.

My grandfather, Sam, was a sign
painter in the Bronx,

and he had the storied,
at least in my family,

stamp collection with sheets
of Winged Globes

and things that he'd collected
in New York in the '20s and '30s

that was sold after he died.

And it was sort of the original
sin of my family

that my vile Uncle Morty sold my
grandfather's stamp collection

to pay for his son's crass Waldorf Astoria
bar mitzvah in 1964.

And the funny thing is, there
were parts of that collection

that weren't-- literally,
weren't nice enough to sell,

and somehow found their way to
me in big sorts of envelopes.

And so I had these first-day
covers from

the Famous American Series
of 1940,

the whole set of them.
And they were nice,

and they just weren't
extraordinarily valuable.

The major thing I did was
I collected Israeli First Day Covers,

because I grew up, you know,
in '67,

the big war, the Six Day War.

And so, uh, Israeli covers not
only have a cache in the corner,

like a First Day cover
would have here,

but Israeli stamps have
a little tab,

like a decorative tab
along the bottom,

and so you would have these tabs
stamps on their cover.

And there was... I always liked
covers because you could

see more of the history
of the stamps.

Somehow when the stamp was by
itself on an album,

it seemed kind of lost
and alone.

Part of stamp collecting is
the thrill of communications,

in the sense that this was how
messages were conveyed,

and these messages
had gone aboard

the Macon or
the Graph Zeppelin.

I love Zeppelin's as a child,
I didn't own any.

The only Zeppelin stamps I had
with those cheap Germans stamps

that they had,
Zeppelin series.

But, of course,
I always aspired

to the three American air mail
Zeppelin stamps,

the 65 cent, the $1.30,
and the 2.60.

You never forget this stuff.

And I would look through Linn's
Stamp News, I was a subscriber,

and it just was like this whole
little, you know--

I was delivering papers,
and I was taking the money,

and I was buying stamps
and coins with them.

I was never like a value guy
where I was trying to, uh,

where I was trying to get the
most expensive stamps

and have them appreciate it and
all that sort of stuff.

That wasn't what I was trying
to do as a child.

I was trying to scratch my itch
to get the stamps

that I could get my hands on.

If you had tapped me on
the shoulder

and asked me what I was doing,

I guess I would say that I was
a stamp collector,

and I was building my
collection.

It became a sign of
elder-hood,

of some infirm guy in his shawl
with his tongs, you know,

tending to his fixation.

When you look at images and
advertising,

I don't think you ever see
someone collecting stamps.

It's not a positive image,
which is a shame.

You know, I write a column
four days a week,

and, uh, and...
it, uh...

and it didn't print out the
second one.

I can just tell you about it.

It used to be
a full page where

I would have different
things in.

So I comment on the passing
stories of the day,

and what happened is the USPS,

in a desperate attempt
to keep afloat,

basically said that you can put
anything you want on a stamp.

You can have your
picture taken,

you can put your dog there
and print it out

and it's a real good U.S.
postage, and you stick it in.

And I kind of just said
it was--

The headline was "Department of
Bartered Dignity,"

where you know, if the idea
was that this--

Why does being on a stamp mean
anything?

Well, it's, it's,
it's an honor,

and if anyone can do it,
it kind of fits in perfectly

with the "prizes for everyone"
aspect of modern life has sadly had.

It seemed to be eating the seed
corn of the interest in stamps.

Okay, if stamps, in part,
are interesting because

what the government chooses

to put on a stamp signifies
something,

well, if anyone can put anything
on a stamp,

that probably signifies
something, too,

but not something good.

And how could you
collect them?

You only have 24 hours in a day
that never expands.

And when you look at the demands
on people...

that my kid can sit down and
learn to fly and pilot his,

you know, his plane on an
enormous beautiful TV

and spend all day doing that,

or playing basketball,
which he does,

and just say, "Hey,
no, no, no, no,

there's a basketball series of
stamps that Malta did in 1974,"

that just doesn't work anymore,
you know.

So, I can't sit here
and say to you,

well, stamps are this fabulous
porthole into the world

that people should have returned
to when there's

so much more effective porthole
that they are turning to.

You don't have to
force them at all.

I do think that when we're
learning with the death of newspapers

that, you know, the things we
thought were vital

turned out to be just expendable
activities.

I don't want to over romanticize
things,

so I don't think that if this,
if this hobby fades,

that it's going to represent

some sort of signal lost to
humanity.

[Douglas Weisz] I would be crushed if there
weren't stamp shows anymore,

or organized philately,

or the American Philatelic
Society.

Philately and postal history
and the mail tells our history.

We're missing just yet another
opportunity

to learn something
and connect with each other

if... if it disappears.

I really think it matters a lot
to a lot of people.

It matters to me.

Before you had stamps, you would
write your letter,

and you would fold it up

and then you take another
piece of paper

and you would cover up
that letter

and seal it with a wax seal.

You could send them prepaid,

or you could send them
postage due,

and the receiver
could refuse it

but would pay for
the postage rate.

So the first envelope was
in the 1830s,

um, and they weren't
widely used

because if you use
two pieces of paper

in the beginning it was
more money.

History and stamp collecting are
intertwined inextricably.

Without history,

you can't really be interested
in stamps,

and stamps tell our history.

The most fabulous piece of
postal history

that I personally have ever
handled was a stamped letter

from Samuel Maverick to his son
Nathaniel in Barbados in 1651.

The first known letter from the
Colonies outbound

and the first known letter
inbound to Barbados.

Maverick, the first settler
of Boston,

had the first home
on Noodle Island,

which is now Logan Airport.

The saying, "He's quite
a maverick,"

comes from Samuel Maverick.

It's awe-inspiring, actually,

to hold history like that in
your hands.

I feel like a custodian of these
things, not an owner,

and it's a responsibility,

it's a huge responsibility to
handle that.

It's why people collect stamps
and covers.

It's to learn about
our history.

I'm really into New Orleans,

so the more kind of things that
you show on your cover

that make me feel like I'm here,
the happier I am.

This is a two-sided cover

from the Roosevelt Hotel
in the '60s.

I think this was a $10 purchase,
but on the back of this cover,

you see fishing in
Lake Pontchartrain on the Gulf,

here's a swordfish,
horse racing,

the Sazerac Bar,
which was very famous.

Of course Mardi Gras festival
right here,

and there's their hotel right
there, the Roosevelt.

The Sugar Bowl,

New Orleans is famous for the
Sugar Bowl even today.

And this is back in the '60s.

You have a whole a history
and a display of New Orleans

on one... on one cover.

I have no family, um, really.

Not that they're not alive,
I just have no family.

It's given me a community that
has become my friends

and people that mean
a lot to me.

I learned about what they were
collecting.

I learned about them,

and they were willing to share
their lives with me,

so they've really become my...
my community.

I'm really worried without
things like philately

and euchre night on Tuesdays,

that we're losing something,

we're losing our culture here in
the United States,

and I don't think you can
replace that

with Facebook or Twitter
or any of that.

I think that our lack of
connection to each other

is breeding fear and anger
and misunderstanding.

People don't go
to stamp shows

to collect the things
that you find there.

They go to stamp shows to get
together, to be social.

I think it just gives everyone
a familiarity,

something in common,

a jumping-off point so that they
can have a community.

I think we need
more community,

and I think philately is
perfect.

[music plays]

[news reporter] Crowds of philatelists,
stamp collectors to you,

attend the annual show of the
Michigan Stamp Club.

Among them these two winners
of the World's Fair beauty contests.

They wanted to get posted on
postage,

that is, valuable postage
like this.

[music plays]

[Jim Forte]
I don't know why I collect,

and I don't know why
anybody collects.

When I got started, it was in
the middle of the 1960s,

and the world was a much larger
place than it is now.

Probably my earliest collecting
memories

is my father used to have
a giant jug of change,

and back in the days when you
were five and six years old

and you'd get up at 7:00
or 6:00 in the morning,

I would sometimes go take that
jar of change

and put all the coins
in date order,

and so you clearly, you know,
you clearly

have that kind of mentality,
you know?

There's definitely a collecting
gene, a collecting personality,

and so, you know,
stamps seem to fill it in.

And it really fulfilled the need
to make order out of chaos.

And a friend of mine had
a collection,

and I remember looking at his
stamps,

and especially looking at some
of the, you know,

engraved British Commonwealth
stamps

from places like Malta
and Cyprus,

and it just seemed so exotic.

I got an album and I got

a H.E. Harris big bag
of worldwide stamps

and was flummoxed on how to get
them off of the paper.

I mean, it was a big learning
experience.

H.E. Harris sent out this
colorful flyer

for this citation album,

and they showed this and it was
open to a page of Angola

where they had dozens of these
colorful stamps.

And you know, there was no point
at that time

where I could afford that album
or those stamps,

and I would look at it,
and they always just...

just sort of liked them.

I mean, it just filled
a special place.

And I don't know why.

H.E. Harris published
a great amount

of number of things on
collecting,

and one of the things they
suggested

was forming a stamp club.

Well, the problem is I might
have known 10 or 20 people,

and there might have been one or
two stamp collectors.

So that really didn't make it
feasible to start a stamp club.

So, it wasn't very, it wasn't--
it was never a social thing.

I mean, it was definitely
something that I did on my own.

I've always been someone who was
more to themselves,

and stamps worked well on
a solitary basis.

I mean, I didn't do too much
with it

for the years I was in college.

Well, that's not true.

I got back into it after a
couple years when I realized

college was a lot easier than
everybody said it was gonna be.

But I always assumed I'd be
doing something else.

It would be like most people,
would be a hobby business,

but when I tried to make it
in the real world,

I found out I wasn't very
successful.

After, you know,
running through

a whole series of
different jobs,

each one less successful than
the last,

what was left was buying
and selling stamps.

I mean, the service businesses
is very difficult.

You know, unless you're
the kind of--

unless you're a good salesman of
yourself and of your service.

A business where you're
selling product,

I mean, the bottom line is,

that you're selling the same
product as everybody else.

It becomes difficult to
differentiate yourself.

And quite frankly, what I've
always seen

is the people that are
successful

are the people that other people
want to do business with.

I remember once I tried
looking up--

I had some spare time, and I did
a Google search

on this psychology of
collecting.

Turns out that all I saw was,
you know, was, um...

What's the right word?
Uh...

It was only about people
who had problems.

So it wasn't very pleasant to
read that. [laughing]

[indistinct chatting]

I'm not what you would call
a "people person",

There's no question that there
is such a thing as emotional intelligence,

and mine is pretty low,

But at the end of the day,

what's nice is when you're
dealing with the collectible,

when the product is what's
important

and it differentiates you
from the next person,

you know, it allows you to
overcome

your lack of emotional
intelligence.

It makes a person feel good
to have these items

and to have these items in this
particular order,

or to have the items, you know,
in a particular manner.

The, you know, to find my--

I think I don't--
How can you tell...

It's hard to suggest
what particular emotion a person gets,

but there's no question that
the collecting gene,

you know, is an emotional gene.

I never get tired of talking
about stamps or Zeppelins

or the people in the hobby
or stamp shows

or where I've been
or anything else

that relates to stamps
and mail.

[music plays]

My mother always tells
the story:

I didn't play with dolls in
the traditional way.

Instead I lined them up
on a shelf,

and every day
I rearranged them.

I collected coins with pennies
and looked for dates.

I collected stamps, put them in
a box, collected sea shells.

I just collected everything,

and as I would go to various
places where I could buy things,

coin shows, stamp shows,

antique shows, flea markets,
whatever,

what I found was the exhibitors
were always the dealers,

except when I went to
a stamp show.

At a stamp show, the collector
was the exhibitor.

They could put their stuff on
display,

and that's what really
excited me.

When I was a teenager,

my grandfather gave me some
photographs of Zeppelins.

I had no idea what a Zeppelin
was.

First thing I did was I went to
the public library,

and I looked up a very classic
book about the Graf Zeppelin,

and I just read it so eagerly,

and I just was amazed

that this entire part
of history existed,

and I didn't know anything
about it.

So I started to look for
everything I could about Zeppelins.

And of course I'm on a teenager
budget, so what could I find?

I could find some picture
postcards,

could find a couple
inexpensive stamps,

I could find an occasional,
maybe, bookmark

or something that wasn't too
costly,

but every piece I've found added
to this bigger, growing story.

And when I found out that they
carried mail,

and I actually bought my first
piece of mail

for a couple of dollars and held
it in my hands,

it was the first time I held
something

that had been on a Zeppelin,

and it just, just grabbed me

and it's held me tight
ever since.

And perhaps
the highlight moment

when I was only, like,
21 years old

is I bought a piece of mail

that survived the crash of
the Hindenburg,

and it was like a major,
major acquisition

at that stage in my life.

When many people are out looking
to buy a car,

I was looking to buy a piece of
mail from the Hindenburg.

There were over 17,000 pieces of
mail on the Hindenburg.

After the disaster,

they've found only about 200
burnt pieces of mail

that survived in the wreckage,

and they put their hands in and
they grabbed those out

and then they sorted
through them

and made lists of the people
who are the addressees,

and then they had
to figure out,

how are we going to return this
to these people?

And then they went back and
found a few more pieces.

So these burnt pieces of mail

that survived the first disaster
ever caught on film

are just among the greatest
treasures in our hobby.

So I actually started out
buying, for several dollars,

uh, pieces of mail
when other people might have

spent that couple dollars to buy
a thousand stamps in a packet.

Later, I actually started some
stamp albums,

because what I found was when I
was meeting other philatelists,

they were so engrossed with
their stamp albums,

they kind of motivated me.

For me, stamps have
opened the door.

When I travel worldwide, I meet
such exciting people,

I don't know how I could ever
meet these people in my life

if it wasn't through philately.

And I can actually go to a stamp
show in a foreign country

and know over a hundred people,

and they invite me into their
homes.

I get all kinds of experiences
in life.

It's that getting off
the beaten track

and having the exposure to
things

that you just don't even know
are there.

You can't even put them on
your bucket list

because it's only through the
stamps taking you there

that you find out things even
exist.

So they have truly been a door
opener for me in my life.

I have a Ph.D. in American
History,

I have a lifelong devotion to
the hobby,

I have lifelong experience
in philately,

and all that knowledge pulled
together

made me an ideal candidate to
come and be in charge

of our nation's stamp
collection,

as the curator of our nation's
stamp collection.

That is this collection of every
citizen of the United States.

And we have over 6,000,000
items.

The collection is well
over a hundred years old.

I'm only the tenth curator
hired

to be in charge of this
collection.

So it's a great honor,
but it's great fun,

because, you know,
I get to look at like,

6,000,000 items and say, okay,

what here deserves to be written
about, researched,

used in an exhibit, brought out
to the public in new ways?

I absolutely believe in
the collector's gene.

I also believe people can learn
to collect.

I think people can adopt their
interests in a variety of ways,

but I think there's a large
group of the population

where they are driven toward
collecting.

It's a way that they define
themselves,

but it's a way that they take
the skills they have

and the interest they have and
the energy they have

and they channel it into one
direction

in such a positive way.

And the great thing
in our hobby is,

when you meet another person
with this gene,

you don't have to justify
who you are,

why you do what you do or how
you do what you do,

we get it right away!

Just start, just think of
something,

something you like,
something of interest to you.

Is it the American flag?
Is it the USA?

Have you always wanted
to go to Chile?

Have you, uh, do you like
tea pots?

It doesn't matter what
the subject is,

it doesn't matter
where it is,

it doesn't matter
the historical period.

It doesn't matter,
because I guarantee you

there is something in
philately for you.

[music plays]

It's a passion, you know,

and if you're lucky enough in
life, you'd develop a passion.

You'll find something
that you just,

you just can't live without.

It was my dad pretty much
that got me

into stamp collecting as
a young, young boy.

He would buy stamps for me,

but also he was in the Navy,
so he would receive letters

and correspondence from friends
all over the world.

And so, of course, you know,
we would collect,

cut the stamps off
the envelopes

and talk about the countries
they came from

and then put them
in the album.

And then when I went away to
school and went to university,

you put that sort of
thing away.

About five years, I was in my
mid-20s, I would guess,

I was in an accident,
I hurt my neck,

and I ended up having to be in
bed for about a month.

And after the first week, I was
going stir-crazy of boredom

and remembered I had this old
collection in the closet

and pulled this thing out
and started looking at it.

And, as opposed to when
you're a young person,

you sort of just collect
randomly items from around the world,

whatever comes in the mail,
things like that.

And obviously when
I went back to

this collection and started
looking at it,

I was viewing it with a,
you know, with adult eyes

and from a totally different
perspective.

I think the first thing that
attracted me

was simply the artistry.

The engraving is absolutely
magnificent.

And as you look closer
at this stuff,

you start realizing how
remarkable it is.

And what happened is
that you...

you start... small,

and you just collect
what you like.

So I started collecting the
general stamps of Great Britain.

And while the modern stamps
told more stories

because of the subject matter
than the early stamps,

the Victorian ones,
in particular,

had this depth and variety

that I started becoming
addicted to.

Prior to 1840,
the recipient of the mail

had to pay the cost of
the postage.

And there's a-- there's an
apocryphal story,

whether or not it's true,
I don't know,

but a man named Rowland Hill,

who was in England,
an Englishman,

saw a young lady being delivered
a letter by a postman,

and she took the letter
and she looked at it,

and then she gave it back to
the postman and said,

"No, I'm not paying for it, but
you know, thank you anyway."

A shilling for the letter
indeed!

You can tell the Post Office
to take it back to London

and I hope it costs them
a shilling!

And off he went.

And so Rowland Hill walked up to
the young lady and said,

"Well, you know,
what's going on here?"

And she said, "Oh, well, it's
a letter for my boyfriend,

"and, uh, on the envelope,
he writes sort of secret codes

"to me to let me know that
everything's okay,

"and I can look at the envelope,
know he's oaky

and I don't have to pay
anything for it."

Rowland thought about this
for a long time.

As I say, this is an
apocryphal story.

I mean, there are a whole host
of other reasons

why postage stamps
were invented,

but that's one of the stories
behind it.

The population has increased by
almost one-third

in the last 30 years,

and yet there are no more
letters

sent through the post then when
I was a boy.

I tell you, sir, as a commercial
undertaking,

the Post Office is a failure.

Post is too expensive, people
can't afford it.

Now my plan is to sell to the
public some kind of a mark

which they could put on
the letters themselves

to show that they've
been paid for.

A printed cover,

a small sticky label.

In fact, a kind of a stamp.

The Penny Postal Reform Act
of 1840

changed the way that mail
was delivered,

and changed-- for the first
time, mail was prepaid.

And to do this, they decided
that you--

he invented the concept
of using a stamp.

[man]
Rowland Hill's plan was adopted,

and penny postage came into
course.

Until the stamps were ready,

people handed in their letter
with a penny.

The stamps were urgently needed
to simplify the work.

The treasury held
a competition,

inviting the public to send in
designs for a stamp.

Over 2,700 entries
were received.

None of them was considered
satisfactory.

So Rowland Hill,
in collaboration with a firm of printers,

made this design.

[Ian] In Britain,
everyone knows of the Penny Black,

which, of course, was the
world's first postage stamp.

So because Britain was
the first country

to come up with the idea
of the stamp,

Britain remains the only country
in the world

that doesn't have to put its
name on a stamp.

Every other country in the world
does, Britain doesn't.

But there is always a picture
of the reigning monarch.

I was collecting Great Britain,
and I'd reached the point

where the only material that was
left in the catalog as it were

or in the spaces in my album
was material I couldn't afford.

It was expensive
or it was rare.

And so I started looking at what
was called the Back of the Book.

These are officials and other
types of stamps

that are not specifically used
for postage,

and there's a whole series of
stamps that were used,

were called overprints.

And these were basic stamps that
had, for one reason or other,

printing done upon them to be
used for different purposes

or for different rates.

And these more affordable.

And I started filling them in

and actually completed one
section.

It's called the British Offices
in China,

which basically is Hong Kong
stamps of the 1900s

that had the word "China"
printed on them.

[music plays]

I was at a stamp show one day
and was talking to a dealer

and he said, "Well, you know,
you've got one of these, right?"

And he pulls out this stamp,

and it's a one-cent stamp,
one-penny stamp,

and it's, uh--
the crown is broken.

I said, "No, I don't
have this."

And so he started spouting off,
"Well, you know,

"you've got the inverted
watermark and you've got this."

And I said, "Well, no.
What are you talking about?"

And he said, "Well,
how are you collecting?

Are you using one of the great
reference works?"

And I said, "Well, I'm using
the standard catalog,

the Scott catalog."

And he sort of rolled his eyes
a little bit,

and you could see I haven't
figured out...

I really didn't know
an awful lot.

And he said, "Well,
you should call the American Philatelic Society

and they've got,
if you're interested in this,
they have information."

It was extraordinary,
it was eye-opening,

because suddenly I realized
that, you know--

I barely begun to scratch
the surface

of what I was actually
collecting.

There was so much more to it.

It wasn't just the art,
it was the story of the stamps

and how they were used and the
rates that they paid

and why they were even
overprinted in the first place.

And the more I started to sort
of dig into this,

the more I found out that
actually wasn't known.

And suddenly the light bulbs
went off.

I mean this was
the coolest bit.

When you, when you find
something

and it's not in the book,

it's not in a catalog,
it's not in a journal.

And you suddenly realize you've
found something

that nobody's found before.

And it just...

Well, you're screwed.
[laughs]

You're absolutely
doomed at this point,

because suddenly this passion
hits you.

There was something
that only I knew

or I'd figured out or found

and that you can share with
somebody else and say,

"Hey, look, you know, this is
really cool stuff."

This is the Broken Crown.

That right there

is the stamp that started the
whole thing off, you know?

Why? Because the crown
is missing,

Half the crown's cut off.

Seems basic,
seems simple,

but for some reason, that set
this whole thing in motion.

You know, so from what was
one page of stamps,

you know, it turned into book
after book after book.

And I'm not stopping
anytime soon.

This was the Broken Crown,
which was the first major error

to be discovered on these
stamps.

What is interesting is,
as I said earlier about

how different printings of the
stamps were different colors,

what makes this really fun
is that we know

there were three printings
of the one penny.

So the first printing was this
sort of regular brown color,

and there's the broken crown.

So we know it appeared on
the first printing.

The second printing was this
sort of reddish brown color.

And there's the broken crown.

So we know it was still on
the second printing.

But this is where it gets
really cool.

This is the third printing,
it's the dark-brown.

Exactly the same position.

The stamp is exactly
the same position.

The crown has been fixed.

So now we know that
at some point

between that printing
and that printing,

they fixed it.

That's awesome!

So what that led to, of course,
was the trip

to the British Museum and the
British Library,

where I sat and went through
microfilms

for days and days and days

trying to figure out what
happened on this stuff.

Who reported it?
How did this happen?

And I came across some
correspondence

from the postmaster
in Shanghai,

you know, in-- I think it was
1920, 1921,

writing back and saying,
"Hey, you know,

"we just discovered this.

"How come you guys
never noticed this?"

And, uh, it was this little
postman or postmaster in Shanghai

was the first one to
report this back.

So the printers, you know,
the post office got annoyed,

and the printers fixed it.

You know, suddenly you've got
this whole story,

all over one stamp.

Brilliant.

There's a stamp that I've wanted
since I was a little boy,

and it has nothing to do with
either Queen Victoria stamps

or British offices in China,

but it's called
the Tyrian Plum.

It's an iconic British stamp,

and I've wanted it my whole
life, basically.

And one finally
came up for sale,

and I had to, uh...

had to do a lot of borrowing
and figuring out how to do it.

Oh, I'm going to be so much
trouble

if people find out
how much I spent.

No, it's...

Yeah, it was, I think,
$157,000, so...

You know, you read about
the Bond villains

that want to steal a Mona Lisa,
and they're going to be a--

they want it because they're
going to keep it in the basement

and look at it, and you think,
God, what a freak!

And I totally get that,

I completely get
that person now.

You know?
[laughing]

[music plays]

It has an absolutely unique
color.

I mean, early on, the big
question was,

how does another country know
that a stamp is valid?

And one of the ways
that they did it

was that they color-coded
stamps.

You'll note, particularly in
the United States stamps,

all of the three-cent stamps

that were issued back in the
'40s and '50s,

they're all purple.

That was so other countries
and agencies

could identify that the stamps
were valid.

So this was sort of used
commonly throughout the world.

When they issued the two-pence,
the Tyrian Plum,

it's just a unique color.

I'm not sure that that color
has ever been used again on British stamps.

But it's just-- There's
something about this piece

that's just iconic and unique
and different

It's just always...

always affected me.

This is something that
just...

I always wanted it.

There's really not a lot
to say about it.

Just... ugghh.
[laughs]

[music plays]

[Stephen Heller]
I think everybody collects something...

even if they collect
nothing.

You want to show them off.

You have gotten them through
some kind of travail,

some kind of struggle or
challenge.

You want to show that you have
them, that you own them.

The display is very important,

because the display says
who you are creatively.

Collecting is a obsessive
activity.

The greater you invest
in the collection,

the more you invest in detriment
of your mental health.

That desire is to fulfill
a goal,

to fill one's life with
something

that is beyond themselves,

to fill one's life
with memories

that may or may not
belong to them.

[Jackie Tohn]
It's such a huge part of my family,

and that it was, like, something
that we could connect on.

And it's just a really cool
window

into something you never
knew about.

[David Feldman]
Things from way far-off lands
you never heard of,

with names of far-off lands
you never heard of.

There's a romance,
I would say a romance.

I wasn't realizing the animal
was growing,

my heart was growing.

[Carlos Vergara]
It's something that is a direct
tie-in to my homeland.

It's a fly-on-the-wall-view
of history

that is hard to obtain
in any other way.

[Alex Haimann]
Mail was the best way for me
to personally connect

with someplace beyond just
seeing a picture of something,

but rather to hold something
from that place,

to have a connection
to that day and time.

[Michael Russem]
I don't know how people really
exist without collecting.

I don't know what they do
with their time

when there's nothing to do.

How do they procrastinate?

I guess maybe they watch
television, which is fine.

[pipe inhaling and exhaling]

I remember it like it was
yesterday.

Two years ago,
I had a client.

Still have the client,
but I had a client.

And he wanted
a particular stamp.

The stamp catalogued £5,000.

It was the last stamp needed to
complete a particular country,

and it is the heart and soul
of that country,

and it is massively
under-cataloged.

It has been since I started
buying them

when they catalogued $500
apiece, years and years ago,

Now they're £5,000.
Still too cheap, in my opinion.

I said, "Fine, I can present you
the stamp, it's very difficult,

"it's the key to the whole
subject,

"it's the only stamp we have
been able to find,

and I want $25,000 for it."

He said, "I'll think about it."
That's fine.

A month goes by, and I get
a catalog from overseas.

And it is a beautiful,
beautiful,

specialized collection of that
particular subject

of which this stamp belonged.

Must have taken him
30, 40 years to put together.

I get to the place for the key
stamp, it ain't there.

That doesn't surprise me.

The following week,
I'm working at my desk.

Maureen says, "Mr. J. Worthy
Pfellfelfinger is on the line."

So I picked up the phone.

I didn't say hello,
I didn't say how are you?

I picked up the phone,
I said,

"He didn't have it, did he?"

That's all I said.

Pause. Then he starts to
laugh outrageously.

He said, "You're right,
he didn't have it."

I said, "What did I tell you?"
[laughs]

He said,
"Do you still have it?"

I said, "Yes, I do."

He said, "I'll take it."
I said, "Thank you."

Sent him the stamps.
Sold it him for 25,000.

While I had him on the line,

I said, "Now, let's have
some fun."

"You and I know that this man
understood

"his subject very well.

Yet he didn't have
the stamp."

So I said to my friend,

"How many times in
the last 25 years

did he have a chance
to buy the stamp?"

I said he had four chances
to buy that stamp

in the last 25 years, on either
side of the Atlantic.

And four times he walked
into the auction room,

sat down, prepared to buy
the last stamp

he needed to complete
the subject.

Four times in a row,
he left the sales room

without buying the stamp
because he wouldn't

make the commitment necessary
to secure the stamp.

And four times in a row,

guess who the buyer was.

So there are three copies
in the vault.

Now, you have to have
the strength of your convictions

if you're going to trash
a catalog figure.

But you have to come to some
conclusions after 50 years.

I took it away from him four
times in a row,

with malice in my heart and
pushed him and pushed him

and pushed him and pushed
and pushed

until he couldn't see straight.

Because I said the stamp is
infinitely more important

than the catalog tends to
indicate.

At the end of the day,
as far as I'm concerned,

I put my money where
my mouth is.

If I'd been desperately wrong in
the last 50 years

on all these kinds of decisions
that I have to make from time to time,

I would've been out of business
40 years ago.

I don't have to have a client
to buy that stamp.

I know exactly how it fits into
the firmament

of the particular collection.

My father got me
a stamp album,

and I outgrew it
rather quickly

and bought a bigger one
about that big,

and for about four
or five years,

I collected stamps from
all over the world,

which gave me a little bit
of an idea

of what some countries
were like

and what sorts of things
they had.

Eventually it got so fat
and it got too big,

it got too big to handle,

and I decided that I wasn't
going to collect

anything my father
was collecting.

Don't ask me why.

I had a particular proclivity
for Zanzibar,

and I decided that the British
Empire was too big to handle.

So I decided I'll take
a chunk of it.

And to me, there were more
exotic and interesting things

in Africa than there was
anywhere else in the Empire.

To this day, I feel
just as strongly.

I proceeded to build a
collection of British Africa

for the reigns of Victoria
and George V.

The collection stops in 35'
on the basis of the fact

that the material after '35
is dirt common,

could be bought on any street
corner or anytime you want,

and all the really rare and
exotic and interesting things

are in the 19th and early
20th century.

Someone once said that one
person in seven

in Switzerland was a stamp
collector.

Well, that's an awfully big
percentage of the proletariat.

Nothing like what
we have here.

It's still a giant market
here.

But, uh, it is as
I can divine

from doing shows all over
Hell's Half-Acre,

it can be wildly addictive.

Ask me.
[laughs]

I'm still-- I'm still hooked
on it, seriously,

after more than 50 years.

Collecting-mania, whether it's
stamps, coins, antiquities,

comic books, trading cards or,
or whatever...

runs hot and heavy in many
people's, uh, makeup.

At the end of the day,
a dealer

needs to learn about valuations
on the basis

of his own experience
with his clients,

especially when the client
is prepared

to spend serious money
on nice material.

It's not a question of whether
I'm purveying the stamp

at 50% of Scott or 250% of
Scott, the stamp's the thing.

At the end of the day, when you
put it on the table,

the response is usually,
"Jesus, George,

do you know how long I've looked
for that stamp?"

I say, "You and the other
17 guys before you."

You all had the same problem.

I studied your problems

and overlaid your problems

with a large group of other
people

who were also serious players.

And lo and behold,

certain truisms came
to the surface.

Not because of one man's
problem,

but because of many people's
problem with the same stamp,

which is why there are a lot of
stamps that I buy,

that are scarce,

that I don't necessarily
have a want-list for.

I have always liked rare things
in the field,

because it has always been
my feeling

that the greatest stamps in
philately are dirt cheap,

irrespective of what
they sell for.

A firm just sold a very nice
example

of the Two Penny Post Office
Mauritius.

A very famous stamp,

a coveted stamp of which there's
about a dozen copies,

although many of them are
institutionalized,

so there's probably
three or four

that possibly could float around

if they were available--
it brought a million dollars.

And that's one of the top five
or six stamps...

on the planet.

Now, if you and I walk over to
Sotheby's

and they're having an
Old Masters' sale,

and they're selling a painting
by Rembrandt's

third cousin twice removed,

how much is that going
to cost us?

Millions and millions
of dollars.

If it was a real Rembrandt,

we couldn't touch it with
a barge pole.

So, as far as I'm concerned,

paying a $1,000,000 for a
Tuppence Mauritius

is a goddamn gift.

Because it is one of the more
revered objects on the planet

as far as philately is
concerned.

I have always felt that great
stamps, of all countries,

are very inexpensive in relation
to objects

of that degree of scarcity
and rarity

in other collecting fields.

Which is why I am very
comfortable

buying very rare and exotic
things because I respect them.

I respect them enough to put my
own money into them

even if I don't necessarily have
a client for it.

But when the client
materializes,

as he does in the fullness of
time,

you can certainly pull something
off that's not available

anywhere in the world
at this point.

You know, you have to be
fortunate in stamp collecting

to, you know, to be at the right
place at the right time.

You know, somebody looking,
for instance,

for the one-cent Z-Grill

might be looking for a long
time,

'cause I own it.

Why stamps? In my case it was
because of my mother.

Um, she, she collected stamps,

but they were sheets of 100 U.S.
commemoratives,

and she bought them at
the post office.

She wasn't a stamp collector,
but, um,

you know, in the late '30s
and early '40s,

she bought pounds and pounds

and hundreds and hundreds of
commemorative sheets

in order to send me to college.

She thought of it as an
investment.

She told me about them,
showed them to me,

and said, "We'll go to
San Francisco, and, uh,

and this is your college
tuition."

Surprise, surprise.

There were four dealers
in San Francisco,

and I took them to each of
the dealers.

They weren't worth the
paper they're printed on.

In other words, a 3-cent
hundred commemorative sheet

wasn't worth $3.

And so knowing that that wasn't
what my mother had intended,

I didn't sell the stamps.

I took them home,
and the look on her face

was of ultimate depression

because she counted on them
appreciating

to send me to college.

My tuition was gone.

20, 30 years later when I,
uh, you know,

began to have some money
that was disposable,

I said, well, I'm gonna...
I'm gonna, do this right.

I'm going to show my mom that
she had the right idea,

she just bought the wrong
stamps.

I started with my home country,
the U.S.

That's what I collected
as a kid.

A matter of fact, I still had
my, uh very basic

U.S. collection with that one
cent Colombian stamp in it.

And so I wanted
to fill in the spaces,

you know, from
the United States.

That's what--
That's what I knew.

You know, the presidents,
the, uh, you know,

the national parks
and all of the stamps

of the early, you know,
20th, uh... 20th century.

I think it was very fortunate

that between 1992
and 2004 or 5,

when ultimately I completed it,
that I was able to do that

because that's a sort of a freak
of a philately that you could

find a willing seller for
exactly what you wanted to buy.

There's this misconception
because Mr. Gross

isn't so much involved in the
social world of stamps,

He's a little bit hidden from
the world.

So they all think he's
just somebody who was just spending money,

he has plenty of money and he
just spends it.

In 1992, he was slowly buying.

He didn't know the right
markets, uh, what to pay.

But then he saw the Ishikawa
sale.

It was about a $10,000,000
collection at that time.

So we started with lot number
one in the sale and he said,

"So what's that worth?"
and I would tell him.

He said, "Do you think I should
have it for my collection?"

I said, "Well, yeah,
that one's very nice."

Lot number two.
"No, I don't think you should have that.

There are better examples
out there."

Lot number three. "What do you
think that's worth?"

"Oh, that's 100,000."
Lot number four.

So we went through
the whole sale,

and in the end, we had
millions of dollars

worth of bids ready.

And so I said,
"What's your game plan?"

And he said, "Well, what do you
mean, what game plan?

I said, "Well, people have
a budget.

"They usually go, I'd rather go
after these,

or I want these four items,
or only spend up to $200,000."

But remember,
now we had millions of dollars
worth the bids.

He goes, "Well, hell, if I can
buy it all, that'd be great!"

[William Gross]
The Z-Grill was an interesting
story in and of itself,

and that was done with the
company Mystic

The stamp that was really
exciting for our company

and for my family is the
one-cent Z-Grill,

and in 1998, the stamp was
coming up for sale.

And I remember when I got
into stamps

and reading about the stamp
and it was valued at $30,000.

And I thought,
how can that be?

And I didn't understand that.

And then it sold for almost
a $100,000

to Jerry Buss in the late '70s

and then sold to a fellow
named Zoellner

for $400,000 in the '80s.

There's two known ones in the
New York Public Library,

now in the Smithsonian,

and this was the other one that
was available to collectors.

So it was really the key to
a complete U.S. collection.

This is a stamp that was an
experimental stamp,

putting an impression
on those stamps

so that it could break
the paper fibers

and ink would be absorbed
in the paper,

and as a result, the stamp
couldn't be counterfeited.

And the Z-Grill, put onto a
variety of different stamps,

just survived in small, small
quantity

on this one cent blue
Benjamin Franklin stamp.

And we believe only two
are known.

And for many people, that would
be considered

the great rarity
in American philately.

If you don't own that,

you can't have a complete
19th century collection.

I really wanted to own it,

and so I went to the auction in
New York with my son,

who is 11 years old, and he had
the bidding paddle,

and we approved it with the
auctioneer.

And so he actually bid
on the stamp,

and we bought it for $935,000.

Mystic had used the Z-Grill for
three or four years

as a, um, an advertisement,

and they'd carry it around to
all their displays and sales

at various, uh, you know, stamp
functions in the country.

[chuckles]
Definitely, yeah, I was

unnaturally attached to that
stamp,

and that, uh, I just,
I loved the owning it,

and I used to pull it out from
time to time and look at it,

and it's just funny how this
little piece of paper

could give me that much
pleasure.

I wrote him. I wrote him a
letter and said,

you know, your advertising is
probably getting a little tired.

Wouldn't you like to, uh,
you know,

exchange that for something
more exciting?

A block of a Inverted Jenny's
was coming up for sale.

I suggested to him
ahead of time

than if I bought the inverted
Jenny Block,

that would be a better
advertising gimmick for him
then the Z-Grill,

and I would exchange the Block
for the, you know, the Z-Grill.

So that's how I got it.

It was a pretty well advertised
exchange, I guess.

Um...

They're not looking at us,
they're looking at the stamp.

Don, thank you very much.
I appreciate it very much.

Thanks.

[applause]

Well, this was a key stamp
for Mr. Gross

because it was the last stamp
he needed to, uh,

achieve the title of having
the most complete

U.S. stamp collection
ever formed.

It was the last space,

and what it did, of course,
was to complete the collection,

which was sort of like the last
piece in the puzzle.

It's a very little piece.

And so it was more valuable to
me than to him,

and I would probably agree that
he got a good deal.

[chuckles]

Uh, I, uh,
it was like...

I-I... It's hard
to put it in words.

There was, like, some deep
emotions going on,

and it just felt like, uh, that,
that it was like

a passing of the guard,

that I was privileged to own
this wonderful stamp

and then it went to a good home.

Here's our block.

And so a block is four stamps,

and a plate number is the number
on the bottom

of the salvage underneath
the stamp.

And that's used by the printers
to track the different plates

that are used to print the
stamp.

This is unique because the plate
numbers

would have been trimmed off on
the top of the sheet.

Because it was inverted,

this plate number showed up in
the bottom salvage.

[music plays]

I loved the Z-Grill because
it's the key to a unique

collection or a complete
collection of U.S. stamps.

And so to own that stamp was
a dream come true.

I never thought that I would,
in a million years,

we'd own that stamp.

And then when we bought it
and we had it,

it was such a special feeling.

A feeling that I wish
I could have bottled

and then pull out from time to
time to re-experience.

You don't want to hold on to
them for 40 years

because that kills the market
and kills the interest.

Not that everybody could
accumulate a Z-Grill,

the one cent Z-Grill or an
Inverted Jenny,

but you have to turn it over for
the good of philately, I think.

I've done that with, uh,
you know,

my Great Britain and UK
collection.

I've done that with actually

almost all collections other
than the U.S.

I've auctioned them off
for charity

for, uh, you know,
Doctors Without Borders,

for a number of charities
that, you know,

the auction in New York
about four years ago

with my classic UK
collection,

you know, raised
nine million bucks.

And so that was
given back.

A number of, uh, wealthy
collectors

now own a majority of
the prizes.

I do think that's a little
unfair,

and that's why I think it's
incumbent

to turn it over,

to give it back.

I was about 10 years old
or so,

and my brother knew I was
thinking about stamp collecting,

because all the little kids did
at that time,

and he bought me an edition of
the Scott Catalog,

which is a book that prices all
the stamps of the world.

Now, at that time it was a book
of maybe 70 or 80 pages.

Today, it's a book
of 200 pages,

each in six different volumes.

That's how stamps have
mounted and grown.

And he gave me a little stamp
album

to put the stamps in that
I got my hands on.

When I was about 15 years old,

and I saved up $18,

and I took my $18 with me to
New York,

and I found a stamp dealer

who sold me a whole box
full of stamps,

because I always had
a little entrepreneurial
spirit about things.

Maybe I should find out how that
business operated.

How I'm going to sell this box
full of stamps?

So I wrote a little ad

describing the box and
the stamps in it.

Priced it $18.75.

Well, apparently it turned
a number of people on

because I got something like
10 to 20 orders.

So I go back to New York and see
the same stamp dealer

and buy more stuff.

The stamp dealer said to me,

"What are you gonna do with all
these names you got?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Well, these were
customers."

You now have developed them."

It was August of 1945,

and I did my first
price list.

And as of last week,
I'm up to number 3,630.

[music plays]

Right around 1970,

the Vietnam War was going on
at a good clip.

Investing in what I call
"paper gold"

might not be a bad idea.

So I got a half a dozen people
together locally,

and we went out and bought
stamps,

and I dominated the big auctions
in New York,

buying the stamps,

like the famous stamp of the
upside-down airplane.

I got a phone call at home,
a local newspaper calling

saying that they had just got
news that this rare stamp

was going to be sold at
public auction

and was I going to be
interested in it.

Was I going to buy
the British Guiana stamp?

Well, I had seen it
once before.

I was only 12 years old
at the time.

I was at the New York
World's Fair.

There it was, in a case of
glass, the one-cent Magenta.

[man]
Ladies and gentlemen,

before we go and sell
lot number 279,

I would like to make a little
announcement.

This is the British Guiana,
one cent, black on magenta,

issued in 1856.

This is known as the world's
most valuable stamp,

known as the most valuable
object

for its size and weight in
existence.

We hope to prove that shortly.

That night,
I get out of my seat,

and I walked to the back
of the room,

and I just didn't do anything

until it hit about
150,000 or so,

and then I put my hand up and
just kept it up.

[man]
At 260,000, at 260,000 I have,

this against you, ma'am,
at 260,000.

At $280,000, in the far rear
at $280,000.

At 280,000 I have,
at 280,000.

Fair warning, this is
the last call.

Sold to Mr. Irwin Weinberg at
$280,000.

It was like a mob of mad men

coming right at me.

I was never so frightened
in my life.

I couldn't believe where they
were going.

They were coming to me!

The next morning, I thought
to myself,

I'm going downstairs

and see what they say in the
newspapers about it.

So I go to the newspaper stand
and I said,

"Do you mind if I look at the
New York Times for a minute?

I'm looking to see if there's
something there."

I went all through the paper
and didn't see a thing.

I looked in the business
section,

the entertainment section,
nothing. Hmm.

I put it back and said,
"Thank you very much."

She said, "Excuse me, sir, but
did you look at the front page?"

I said, "No." She said,
"You better look at it."

I looked at it, turned it over
and there I was.

Well, the British Guiana
is a storied,

wonderful, storied stamp.

It was issued in 1856
in British Guiana

in a situation where the stamps
that had been

produced in Britain for British
Guiana were delayed.

And so the local post office had
to produce their own stamps.

But the stamps they produced
were so crude in the sense

that the postmaster said the
postal clerks

really had to sign each stamp,
initial it,

before delivering it in order to
ensure it's a genuineness.

But the famous one-cent,
the famous one-cent.

Well, it's unique.

Only a small number were
produced of one-cents.

It's unknown how many there were
needed at that point.

So it was used on newspapers,

people saved their letters
inside envelopes,

you had stamps on envelopes,

but the wrappers around the
newspaper were not saved,

and so there wasn't the same
sort of opportunity.

It really wasn't until 1873

when a 12-year-old boy named
Vaughn

found one of the one-cent
Magentas.

Now, he didn't realize that it
was unique.

He asked a local collector
if he could

sell the local collector some
of his stamps.

The local collector said "Sure,"
gave him a few shillings

and then he in turn sold his
collection

to a dealer in Scotland.

And then he in turn sold it to

the world's greatest collector
of stamps, Count Ferrary.

At the beginning of the First
World War as an Austrian,

he fled France as an enemy
alien, went to Switzerland.

The stamp stayed behind in
Paris,

and then he died in 1917.

And in his is will,

he left his collection to the
Berlin Postal Museum.

The Germans, of course,
lost the war,

and the French seized Ferrary's
stamp collection

as enemy property belonging
to Germany

and sold it in a celebrated
series of sales.

And in 1922, the British Guiana
came up for sale

and set a new world record
for a stamp,

which it consistently did every
time it was sold at auction.

At that sale, famously,
you know, King George V

is supposed to have bid and not
gotten the stamp.

And it went to a man named
Arthur Hind,

who was an industrialist,

and certainly owning
the British Guiana

made his collection famous,
he realized that.

He was very proud of that

and created his own a postcard
of the stamp in fact.

And then when he died, there was
a great court case

because he was estranged from
his, uh, his widow,

and she'd been left the contents
of his house.

And it turned out that the stamp
actually was still in the house.

Put it on the market and
ultimately sold it

to a man named Frederick Small

who made a lot of money in the
rayon business.

And in 1970, it was bought by a
syndicate of buyers

led by Irwin Weinberg,

famously traveling around the
world with a briefcase

strapped to people's wrists
by handcuffs.

Oh, the showmanship!

Then after that came a lot of
television appearances.

The Mike Douglas Show.

To Tell the Truth.
Yeah. Yeah.

And, uh, they didn't guess me,
by the way.

[laughing]

The Japanese came to me and
offered me a marvelous deal

if I would bring it to Tokyo
and exhibit it.

And I said, "Well,
I just don't know,

I have to talk to my partners
and see how they feel about it."

They said, "But we promise you
one thing.

"It will be shown in Tokyo
exactly the way

we showed when we borrowed
the Mona Lisa."

Well, that was good enough
for me.

We showed it in London,
Paris,

Tokyo, Prague,

Toronto, New York,
and Perth, Australia.

It would always bring out

tens of thousands of people
to see it.

Ten years is a long time
for any investment.

The partners were getting a
little tired.

I was getting a little tired.

And then we decided
we'll sell.

And the venue was going to be
the same place

that we bought it through
ten years earlier.

And I gave a great cocktail
party that night, by the way,

in our suite at the hotel.

The New Yorker was there.
Reuters was there.

Oh, it was a big, big thing.

Well, what happens is

we had $280,000 in this thing.

The stamp opens a $100,000.

He goes a 100, 125, half, 200,
quarter, half,

300, quarter, half, 400,
quarter, half, 500.

I then turn to one of my
children and say,

"Go to the telephone, call the
liquor store

and tell them to double
the order."

And if it wasn't, it should've
been Dom Perignon.

[man]
750, 800,000.

$850,000.

It's knocked down, sold!

[reporter]
The bidding on the stamp was over so quickly,

many didn't know
who purchased it.

The British Guiana sold for
$850,000 plus 10% commission.

And no one knows what
the new owner will do

with the world's most precious
stamp.

The new owner has chosen to
remain anonymous.

They had nobody else
to talk to but me.

And I found myself
on the front page

of the New York Times
the next morning.

I never dreamed of doing that
twice with the same thing.

Sometime later, I got a phone
call from John Du Pont.

He said, "I am the buyer
of the stamp,

"and I'd like to pick it up.

"Meet me in New York

and then we'll see where we go
from there."

I said, "Great."
So I meet him in New York.

Du Pont says, "Listen," he said,
"I'm going to go home,

and if you would like to come
along, I'd love to have you."

Sure. We went over on the East
Side to the heliport.

He said to the pilot,
"I want Mr. Weinberg

to see the Statue of Liberty
on our way out."

It goes up, right up by the
torch and circles it.

He said, "I just want you to
know that I feel very strongly

"that there are very few people
in this world

"who are qualified personally to
own a treasurer such as this,

and I believe you are
the other one."

[music plays]

I've kept the memory of this
inanimate object alive

by keeping every scrap of paper
that pertains to it.

There's a history,
there are other people who've seen it,

who have owned it.

There are records.

I can produce the cancelled
check

from the British Guiana,

It's indisputable.

Du Pont owned it, exhibited it
a couple of times,

but it's really not been seen

since the 19...
the late 1980s.

And then he, in turn,
died in 2010.

And his estate now has put it up
for sale with us.

The most famous stamp
in the world.

I don't know
what it will fetch,

but let's assume for the sake
of argument,

brings a price never before
heard of by man or beast.

$5,000,000.

Well, you can't buy a third rate
old master for $5,000,000!

Yeah, I think it's ugly.

That's not to say
anybody else does.

I mean, I know that
a lot of people

who think it's absolutely
magnificent.

Uh, I know a lot of people
who think

that what I'm collecting
is ugly or boring.

That's the beauty of stamp
collecting,

there's no right
and there's no wrong.

A hundred Rothkos out there

and 10,000 Picassos,

but there's only one Penny
Magenta,

and someone is going to really
get off on that.

It won't be me, alas.

Stamps, I think, are very, very,
very inexpensive.

They have a lot further
to go value-wise than many other items.

Somebody pays $28,000,000 for
some obnoxious painting.

There isn't
a $28,000,000 stamp.

The great pieces of philately,
in my opinion, are dirt cheap.

Dirt cheap. They always
have been.

[indistinct chatting]

[gavel pounds]

Good evening, ladies and
gentlemen.

My Name is David Redden,

and I want to welcome you to
Sotheby's

and our sale this evening of
the British Guiana.

And I will start the bidding
at $4,500,000.

It's at $4,500,000 now.

At $5,000,000 now, bidding at
$5,000,000.

At $5,500,000.

At $5,500,000.

At $6,000,000 now,
$6,000,000.

$6,500,000.

At $6,500,000.

At $7,500,000.

At $7,500,000.
Any advance?

At $7,700,000.

At $7,700,000.

$7,800,000.

$7,900,000.

On the telephone,
at $7,900,000.

Fair warning,
at $7,900,000.

On the telephone, then,
$7,900,000.

[pounds gavel]
$7,900,000.

[applause]

You have to accept this idea.

The British Guiana is
"the" unique.

Unique means
there is no other.

Nothing has a history like
the British Guiana.

It's sheer ugliness makes it
beautiful, really.

Yeah.

[Redden] This sets a brand-new world
record for a stamp,

and the fact that this rather
wonderful

but very small object

brought nearly $9.5 million

shows that the market is strong,
it's really strong.

[music plays]

I'm Stuart Weitzman,

and women say I'm more famous
for my shoes,

but for the past few days,

a lot of the stamp collectors in
the world know me

because I've bought the British
Guiana stamp.

When I was ten years old,
my brother collected stamps,

and I inherited his collection
when he went off to university.

There isn't a place in the
international album

to put the British Guiana.

No one who has this album
ever expects

that it's anything more than
symbolic,

to show us that there are
great rarities.

I was reading about the British
Guiana stamp

in a New York Times article on
its up-and-coming sale

several months down the road.

It had been publicized
for a long time.

The man who owned it, we all
know the story,

he had killed his wrestler,

spent the rest of his life
in jail,

and until he passed away,

the stamp was not available
for sale.

And I, I can see that page with
that hole where that stamp goes.

And I said, "Okay, I'm going to
make a phone call."

I've often had a frustration
with items

that I think the world
should see

and have a chance to appreciate
that owners don't let out.

And I often try
to convince the owner

to display them or sell them.

There are a lot of people who
would have a great interest

in seeing items such as this
stamp and documents

that are rare and other things
of that nature.

Not everyone cares.

Um, but enough people do that
they should have that chance.

That's the beauty, of course,
of museums.

Anybody can see anything
in a museum.

They're not warehouses.

They're not storing things,
there for showing things.

I decided that this would be
a good way

to fulfill one of
my ambitions,

and, uh, alleviate one of my
frustrations

about the fact that:
here's the stamp.

160-170 years old.

Very few people have ever had
a chance to see it.

The few owners
who have had it

have kept it under
lock and key.

You know, the excitement of
obtaining something

at a highly publicized auction,
the adrenaline that flows.

Any bidder will tell you.

I don't know how
you duplicate that,

and the pleasure I am getting
out of it

for its availability
to the public,

I expected but never as much as
it's been so far.

It's at the Smithsonian Postal
Museum in Washington

and temporarily on display at
events around the world.

The British Guiana stamp
certainly has its fame,

not because of its beauty
and design.

When I hear someone say,
"It's a gorgeous magenta color,"

I think, I make leather

that's better-looking magenta
than that, you know?

It isn't about being
a gorgeous stamp.

That's not what it's about.

The stamp is about being rare

and having stories behind it
and how it was found.

I met people whose business
was stamps

and others whose hobby was
stamps.

They both had a great passion
for it.

I got the impression that those
for whom it was a business,

it was also a hobby.

All collectors have
the same passion.

You know, you almost never think
you can get everything you want,

and you really,
generally don't.

So the challenge is there,
continually.

The story behind what you find
is exciting.

So many collectors have told me
how they found this piece

that they're showing or that
piece that they're showing.

They're the Sherlock Holmes of
their trade.

It's, uh, it's brought a little
extra fun in my life.

Truthfully, it has.

If I were in a position where
someone wanted to buy it from me

and it would've resulted in,
say, in a wonderful profit

that I would not
have expected,

I would have to think,

what would I do
with the money?

I don't show these stamps
to encourage others to go buy things.

I want people to see it.

It's simple. It's not more
complicated than that.

That's exactly
how simple it is.

Here's something that
I love to see.

I have a chance,
here's your chance

Why stamps?

To those who know, there's no
answer necessary.

To those who don't,
there's no answer possible.

And that really is what
it comes down to.

A lot about collecting,
you know,

a lot about many of the
interests that I have

and I think a lot of people
have.

I'm not sure there's a
logical reason.

How many walks of life are there
where you can find something,

you can discover something
about the world

that nobody else knows,

nobody else has
discovered, yet?

It's a unique opportunity,
and, and...

you can find it in all sorts of
areas of philately.

It's not just one place.

You can become the expert in
your field of philately.

You can write a book that's
never been published.

You can share it with your
colleagues

and be esteemed as an expert
in your field.

It's that opportunity of
discovery.

It's hard put it into words,

but I think stamps can be
beautiful.

It's a progression
of history,

the culture
and artistic tastes,

and the topics change
over time.

So it's really like
a time capsule

as you look at,
uh, the stamps

that had been issued over
a hundred years.

It's generally a curious mind

that wants to collect
and wants to learn.

Every collector is really
a curator

of his own little museum.

You know, I don't know

what the future of
our hobbies is,

but I can imagine, in a really
space--

outer-space-kind-of-driven
future.

Someone's going to put
a whole bunch of stamps on a computer chip

and embed it in the back
of my brain,

and then I can just flip through
the catalog of life

and see every stamp
ever coming out

and just lie there in the chair,
thinking and say,

"Okay, organize every stamp

that's got a cat that's
black and white."

And suddenly, instantly,

there I'm going to look at
all these cats

as I'm petting the one
on my lap.

You know, I just think we can't
even imagine the options

and possibilities that this
hobby can provide for us.

It's passion.

You can't fake passion.

It doesn't matter whether you're
black, you're white,

you're man, you're a woman,
you're gay, you're straight,

you're a Democrat,
you're a Republican,

we're there because we all have
our own odd passion in stamps.

I just, I just wish sometimes
that, you know,

you can communicate
to other people,

either you get it
or you don't.

And just-- when you get it,
and the light bulb goes off...

I mean, shit, it's fun!

[Ian]
Sorry.

I look at most things
as passing things, I guess.

I tend to view the world as...

7 billion people

you know, created 15 billion
years ago,

and there'll be another
15 billion on top of that.

And so, you know, so a stamp
collection,

how meaningful is that within
the context of humanity

and the history that we've had
and will have,

uh, you know,
when I'm no longer here?

Um, you know,
it was fun to do.

Is it the achievement
of my life? No.

Um, I would hope that would be
my family,

and, uh, second of all,
my career.

And this was a hobby,
and, yeah, it was great,

and I am glad I did it
and sort of proud.

It's like, um,
it's a fun thing.

[chuckles]

I probably haven't looked at my
collection in 20 years,

which is amazing because I could
tell you all about it.

I could tell you the various
stamps,

and you know,
the Lindbergh stamp,

which was a big deal
because living Americans weren't on stamps,

but they got around it
by just having the plane as opposed to him,

which is better because the
plane is more noteworthy anyway.

It's so odd.
It's like your hometown.

I know they're there,
I'm glad they're there.

Every once in a while, my kids
look at them and they say,

"Why don't you-- you know,
you could sell these."

I'm like, "Well, but I can't
conceive of selling them

because they're part
of who I am."

In a chaotic and often
frightening world,

stamp collecting is
a way to create

a beautiful order
and symmetry

that might be hard for some
people to find anywhere else.

I will not retire willingly
from this business.

They will find me slumped over
my desk

with a pair of gold
stamp tongs,

deader than a doornail.

But I will not voluntarily quit
because it's been too much fun.

I love my clients.
I love my work.

It's fascinating,
intriguing,

mind-expanding,

and something which allows us

to always be an academic
student of the subject.

Because there is a
phantasmagoria of things to know

about an incalculable number of
different items.

So it's something that one can
devote their life to,

trying to gain a modest
understanding of,

and for me, that is the great
fascination of philately

and is why I love it dearly now
as I did 50 years ago.

All kids have a dream.

I talked to myself,

someday I'm going to get outta
this town.

That's what I had in
the back of my mind.

That I was going to go
to New York

and do a Horatio Alger bit,

and in due course

be known to every
head waiter

and every night club
in New York City

and take-- own New York City
in that way.

That's all I wanted to do.

And all of a sudden,
I'm doing it.

And by the way, on the back of
that stamp

are several initials of
the former owners.

I added mine.

So if I ever see it again,

I'll know if it's
the real thing.

[chuckles]

[music plays]

[music plays]