As Many Of Our Friends And Readers Know,

I am a philatelist, 

that is I collect stamps, and thought I would make a post about this one, it is a 1856 postage stamp that is considered the world’s most expensive object by weight, ‘The British Guiana One-Cent Black on Magenta’, a bit about the stamp, the British Guiana One-Cent Black on Magenta isn’t even a real stamp. In 1856, a local news office in British Guiana printed a number of pieces of paper adorned with an image of a three-masted ship and the colony’s motto, ‘We give and expect in return,’ to temporarily replace a batch of postage stamps the postmaster considered counterfeit, these replacement stamps were taken out of circulation in just a few weeks, after a new batch of actual stamps was brought in, but 17 years later, in 1873, a 12-year-old boy found one among his uncle’s letters and sold it to a local stamp collector. Fast forward 150 years and that little piece of magenta paper is the world’s most valuable object by weight, for the full story and provenance of the stamp have a look here, as for the weight, it is only 40 milligrams, so for weight for money to put that into perspective, the average 0.2-carat diamond (which also weighs 40 milligrams) in a ring costs about £650, 

the stamp was recently sold for £9.5 million, but here is the thing, you can actually buy a piece of it! Stanley Gibbons, the owners of the stamp have decided to sell parts of the British Guiana One-Cent Black on Magenta stamp like shares of a company, the stamp was split into 80,000 pieces or shares that anyone could buy for £100 ($121) per piece, it sounds like a great investment, as the value of this extremely rare collectible is only expected to rise with time, and would I like a share? Yes please!