Richard McDonald is happy with his five-figure profit on a $10 stamp.
The Victoria collector’s rare British Bechuanaland stamp was snapped up at auction Friday for $92,000 US by an American buyer.
“I’m very good with that,” said McDonald, who sat tight in Victoria waiting to hear how the Hartford, Connecticut-based auction turned out. McDonald said the buyer was challenged by a British collector in a round of telephone bidding.
McDonald had thought the price might go higher, but understands why it didn’t.
“The problem is it was an unknown stamp that most people didn’t know existed, so it was hard to get a lot of publicity for it,” he said.
It was part of a larger collection of several thousand stamps he bought about five years ago in England, but he didn’t even realize he had it until about three years ago.
“It was just in the back page of the album.”
He estimates the stamp represented about $10 of the $400 he spent on the collection.
Pinpointing an actual value for the stamp was difficult, he said, but he has referred to it as the equivalent of a lottery ticket.
“One never knew what it could bring. Comparable stamps that are better known have brought $165,000, so actually it’s a fair price for the new purchaser, as well.”
The price should go up, McDonald said.
“I think over time as it gets better known it will probably continue to appreciate.”
Only four such stamps are known to exist, and three of them are in museums, McDonald said.
The stamp was first issued in 1888 in British Bechuanaland, a colony in southern Africa that would eventually become Botswana. The one-shilling stamp is unusual in that it features a portrait of Queen Victoria that was “overprinted” with a five-pound mark in 1918.
The overprint was a result of shortages of resources during the First World War.
Prior to its sale, an expert said such a stamp could go for $1 million or more, if it were from Britain or the United States.
