Prague, Nov 26 (CTK) – The most valuable Czechoslovak stamp, which is the sole Czech representative among rarities recognised in the world and which was sought by generations of Czech philatelists, was auctioned off for more than 1.7 million crowns including an auction surcharge on Saturday.
The reserve price was one million crowns.
The stamp with the printed value of “50/50h To make additional payment” was issued by mistake in 1927, expert Frantisek Benes, who confirmed the specimen is genuine, told CTK.
The letter “h” on the stamp stands for heller, which was one 100th of the Czechoslovak crown.
Czechoslovakia was established in 1918. As from January 1993, it split into the Czech and Slovak republics.
Benes said only two or three Czechoslovak stamps are sold for more than one million crowns today. With the exception of the one sold on Saturday, they are no rarities. They are not even recognised as real stamps because they were not part of an official issue, he added.
The new owner of the stamp auctioned on Saturday comes from the Czech Republic just as the original owner, and he participated in the auction by phone.
The high price of the stamp is also due to its difficult fate. Only about 100 pieces of it were issued by mistake at the end of the 20th century, but a mere 17 of them were found later. The specimen auctioned today, is the first one found since 1939. Benes said its print differs from the other ones found previously.
He said the stamp was almost forgotten in a drawer. Its original owner, an old-age pensioner from Moravia, recently moved to an old people’s home and he could only take a small part of his extensive collection with him.
He asked his friends collectors to take from the rest what they would like. One of them noticed the stamp printed by mistake and recommended to the owner to consult an expert.
The expert found out that it is a genuine specimen of the “Holy Grail” of philatelists.
“The original owner will come to the old people’s home with a a nice amount, which we all sincerely wish to him,” Benes said.
The stamp will be a good investment for the new owner. “If we consider the prices we had three years ago, the present ones are even more than twice as high,” Benes said.
“This is due to the general uncertainty in society because stamps always fare well when difficult times are coming close. This is what our predecessors found out during the (Nazi) protectorate, in 1948 [when the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia] and in 1968 [when a Soviet-invasion crushed the Prague Spring reform movement],” Benes said.
“Another reason is that the World Stamp Exhibition Praga 2018 is coming close. It is time when investors’ interest always increases because they want to present themselves as well as possible at the exhibition,” he added.
Praga 2018 may also see the two most valuable stamps in the world, the Blue Mauritius and the Red Mauritius, which a Czech investor bought recently. He did not release the price, but experts estimated it at about 100 million crowns.
