When Scarlet Met Magenta!

I read today that the world's most expensive stamp was sold at auction last week for £5.6 million, a billion times its face value! The stamp in question is the only surviving one-cent magenta stamp from British Guiana, now Guyana, which was first produced in 1856 after a shipment of normal postage stamps was delayed thus threatening to disrupt the then British colony's postal service.

The story put me in mind of my old fave Travis McGee again and, this time, of his 1973 caper, The Scarlet Ruse, where he goes on a "salvage" mission to recover a fortune in missing rare stamps. When he is shown the one-cent magenta he has one of his epiphanies.

"British Guiana. One cent magenta. Valued at $325,000. Unique, meaning there is only one in the world ... if there is only one British Guiana in the world and you own it, you walk about with the knowledge of being the only man who owns it. You are unique ... So what packrat preoccupation did I have? What special artifacts does McGee fondle? As I was about to pronounce myself immune, I suddenly realized I am the worst possible kind ... unique, shameful and totally hedonistic. Misfit. An ant with a grasshopper syndrome."

Way da go, Trav!

Click to find out more about the one-cent magenta