New Zealand Rarest Stamp Up For Auction Next Weekend At $250,000

Back in 1903, a unique Four Penny New Zealand postage stamp was printed showing Lake Taupo upside down and used on a letter sent from Picton in 1904. By 1930 when it was discovered, it proved too late to find any more.

It will be offered in Mowbray Collectables 20 September Stamp sale at 11.30 am in Wellington with an estimate of $250,000. It last sold in 1998 to New Zealand Post for $125,000.

The sale is part of a two-day sale of stamps, coins, medals and banknotes over 19 and 20 September with a record catalogue value of over $2.1m and 1515 lots.

Also for sale are a huge range of the World’s first postage stamps, the Great Britain Penny Blacks of 1840, including 302 examples in Lot 786 estimated at $20,000 and a rare mint example in Lot 801 estimated at $3500.

The coin auction on 19 September features over $300,000 of popular gold coins and medals from the New Zealand Wars. One medal is to Joseph Lacey, a sailor on the ship, HMS Hazard, which lost six sailors killed in March 1845 and evacuated settlers from Kororareka (Russell) after the British flagpole was famously felled four times by Hone Heke.

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