A nearly 160-year-old stamp is expected to sell for $20 million at an auction on Tuesday, making it the most expensive stamp sold at auction.
The 1856 stamp, from a British colony in South America, is no stranger to the auction block, according to The Guardian. It broke the auction record for a single stamp when it was sold in 1922. It broke another record when it was sold again in 1970- only to break a third record ten years later.
The one-cent British Guiana stamp may break its fourth record at Tuesday's auction in New York City, where it is expected to fetch between $10 and $20 million, The Guardian reported.
"You're not going to find anything rarer than this," Allen Kane, director of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, said according to the newspaper. "It's a stamp the world of collectors has been dying to see for a long time."
The last time the magenta-colored stamp was on display was in 1986. It was owned by the now convicted murderer John E du Pont, who bought it in 1980 for a record-breaking $935,000. His estate is handling the stamp's sale.
Another record was set when the stamp was sold by Australian engineer Frederick Small for $280,000 in 1970, The Guardian reported.
Before Small, the stamp went through a series of owners, including the Post museum in Berlin in 1917 and a textile magnate from New York. France seized the stamp collection from the museum as part of reparations for the war and auctioned it for $35,000, its first record. It was purchased by the textile magnate.
The stamp is one of three that a postmaster had printed in Georgetown, British Guiana when a shipment of stamps from London was delayed, according to the newspaper.
A Swedish stamp from 1855 that sold for $2.3 million in 1996 is the current record holder.
The auction is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Sotheby's.
