Overview

A journey into the colonial history of Guyana and the story of the 1 cent Magenta, the world's rarest and most expensive postage stamp. The One-Cent Magenta Stamp was first discovered by a 12-year-old schoolboy, L. Vernon Vaughan, amongst some family papers in the 1856 edition of The Royal Gazette, Georgetown, in 1873. He sold it for six shillings, apparently convinced he could find a better stamp example, but no one ever has. It was no longer an ordinary stamp, a disposable element on a newspaper that was itself disposable. From the 1870s, the one-cent magenta was prized, tucked away in closely watched storage cabinets in palaces or vaults in banks. It fits the definition of collected objects prescribed by the cultural historian Philipp Blom in 2011. Such things "are like holy relics," he wrote. "They have shed their original function and become totems." This tour will bring you close to the home of the world's rarest stamp.

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