Fred Liberatore writes:

Fred Holabird responds:

William Gross said to sell it all, a command that would have made Wall Street shudder if he had been talking about his huge portfolio of bonds.

But he was talking about his huge portfolio of postage stamps, and Charles Shreve - a stamp dealer who built Gross's collection for him - has spent years carrying out the sell order.

The sell-off will conclude in New York with a sale that will feature a tiny 1-cent stamp from 1868 - a used stamp with a silhouette of Benjamin Franklin that is partly blocked by the curve of the postmark. It is known among collectors as the

The auction house that will sell it on June 14 is predicting that it will go for $4 million to $5 million. That would make it the most valuable U.S. postage stamp. It would still trail the 1-cent magenta from British Guiana, which sold for $8.3 million in 2021.

The Z-grill is one of only two such stamps known to exist. The other has been owned by the New York Public Library since the 1920s. They were apparently the only survivors from among thousands printed. The others were thrown away, having been sent by and publishers dispatching circulars, according to Scott Trepel, the president of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, the firm handling the sale.

To read the complete article, see:
A Tiny Stamp That May Sell for Millions(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/nyregion/z-grill-stamp-auction.html)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
HOLABIRD ON THE COLLECTIBLES MARKET(https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n10a08.html)