The British Guiana 1¢ Magenta is famed as being the world’s rarest stamp. It was issued in limited numbers in Guyana, formerly British Guiana and to this day only one example is known to exist.

The British Guiana 1¢ Magenta is famed as being the world’s rarest stamp. It was issued in limited numbers in Guyana, formerly British Guiana and to this day only one example is known to exist.

It is an imperforate stamp, printed in black on magenta paper and features a sailing ship along with the colony’s motto “Damus Petimus Que Vicissim”, which translates as “We give and expect in return”. There are four thin lines which frame the ship, and the stamps country of issue and value in small black upper case lettering in turn surround the frame.

The 1¢ magenta was part of a series of three definitive stamps issued in that year and was intended for use on local newspapers. The other two stamps, a 4¢ magenta and 4¢ blue, were intended for postage.

The issue was a complete accident. Stamps that were due to arrive by ship in 1856, failed to turn up, so the local postmaster, E.T.E. Dalton, authorised a printer, Joseph Baum and William Dallas, to print out an emergency issue of three stamps. Dalton gave some specifications about the design, but the printer chose to add a ship image of his own design on the stamp series. Dalton was not pleased with the end result, and as a safeguard against forgery ordered that all correspondence bearing the stamps be autographed by the post office clerks.

This known example of the stamp was initialed E.D.W. by the clerk E.D.Wight. It is in used condition and has been cut in an octagonal shape. A signature, in accordance to Dalton's policy, can be seen on the left hand side. Although dirty and heavily postmarked on the upper left hand side, it is nonetheless regarded as priceless.

It was discovered in 1873, by 12-year-old Scottish schoolboy Vernon Vaughan in the Guyanese town of Demerara, amongst his uncle's letters. There was no record of it in his stamp catalogue, so he sold it to a collector some weeks later for a few shillings to a local dealer, N.R. McKinnon. After that, the price escalated. It was bought by a succession of collectors before being bought by Philippe la Rénotière von Ferrary in the 1880s for US$750. His massive stamp collection was willed to a Berlin museum. Following Ferrary's death in 1917, the entire collection was taken by France as war reparations following the end of World War I. Arthur Hind bought it during the series of fourteen auctions in 1922 for over US$36,000 (reportedly outbidding three kings, including King George V), and it was sold by his widow for US$40,000 to a Florida engineer. In 1970, a syndicate of Pennsylvanian investors, headed by Irwin Weinberg, purchased the stamp for $280,000 and spent much of the decade exhibiting the stamp in a worldwide tour. John E. du Pont bought it for $935,000 in 1980. Today it is believed to be locked away in a bank vault, while its owner serves a 30-year sentence for murder.

At one point, it was suggested that the 1¢ stamp was merely an altered copy of the magenta 4¢ stamp of the 1856 series, a stamp very similar to the 1¢ stamp in appearance. These claims were disproven.

In the 1920s a rumour developed that a second copy of the stamp had been discovered, and that the then owner of the stamp, Arthur Hind, had quietly purchased this second copy and destroyed it. The rumour was never substantiated.

In 1999, a second 1¢ stamp was claimed to have been discovered in Bremen, Germany. The stamp was owned by Peter Winter, who is widely known for producing many forgeries of classic philatelic items, printed as facsimiles on modern paper. Nevertheless, two European experts, Rolf Roeder and David Feldman, have said Winter's stamp is genuine. The stamp was twice examined and found to be a fake by the Royal Philatelic Society. In their opinion, this specimen in fact was an altered 4¢ magenta stamp.

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