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Show L.i... Stamp Valued at $50,000 Uncovered in New York A tiny, black-and-magenta bit of paper valued at $50,000 changed hands recently after an 84-year history his-tory rivaled by only the most precious pre-cious of diamonds. It was the world's most valuable stamp the only known one-cent British Guiana cover of 1856 in existence. ex-istence. Macy's department store in New York city purchased it for an unnamed un-named client at an undisclosed price from Mrs. Ann Hind Scala of Utica, N. Y. Thus the little sticker sought by leading collectors the world over entered en-tered a new chapter of romantic peregrinations per-egrinations that might be envied by the Hope or Jonker diamonds. Chronologically, the saga of the stamp leads through several unidentified uniden-tified owners before its discovery in 1873 as something out of the ordinary. ordi-nary. That year L. Vernon Vaughan of Demarara, British Guiana, found it while looking over some old family papers. He sold it to a collector for six shillings. It found its way into the collection of Count Philippe la Renoitiere von Ferrary. It remained there for 44 years the count shrugging off incredible in-credible offers for it. He never sold i stamp." ' In 1917, however, Count Ferrary died and willed his collection valued val-ued as high as $25,000,000 to the postal museum in Berlin. At the close of the first Great war, the French government announced the collection would be sold for the reparations rep-arations account Three years later the auction was held. The bidding was spirited for the world's rarest stamp, with Arthur Ar-thur Hind (late husband of Mrs. Scala) Sca-la) competing with a wealthy Alsatian Alsa-tian manufacturer. |