Prague, March 11 (CTK) – The most valuable Czechoslovak stamp, with the starting price of four million crowns, was sold for 7.8 million crowns within an auction of the stamp collection of the best-known Czech philatelist Ludvik Pytlicek on Sunday.
The 19-percent commission will be added to the price.
The four-crown green stamp was issued in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, of which the Czech Lands were part until the foundation of the Czechoslovak state in 1918, but it has a reversed overprint saying Posta ceskoslovenska (Czechoslovak Post) 1919.
Pytlicek bought the stamp in 1996 for 2.6 million crowns from its previous owner to whom it had been returned within the property restitution launched after 1989. Stamp collector Zdenek Kratina gained it in the 1930s, but the Czechoslovak state seized the stamp after 1945 and placed it in the Post Museum in Prague. The state returned the stamp to the owner only after the fall of the Czechoslovak Communist regime.
Only a single specimen of this stamp has been known. The auction of the final part of Pytlicek’s collection culminated with its sale.
Pytlicek, 75, sold the largest collection of Czechoslovak stamps dating from 1918-1939 because his descendants do not pursue philately. Last year, he sold part of it for about 30 million crowns, including nine joined stamps with a faulty inscription Magyar Posta from 1919, which were sold for two million crowns.
Pytlicek was satisfied with the result of the auction on Sunday. He said he does not know the identity of the new owner of the most valuable Czech stamp, but he would guess it is German stamp auctioneer Christoph Gartner.
Pytlicek said he would use the money to buy a new car and travel the world with his whole family.
