Audrey Hepburn Stamp

Being a stamp collector ( just ordinary, nothing in my collection is worth anything), I am always interested in any stamp news or finds. Here’s one that caught my eye recently :

BERLIN (May 26) - A rare stamp portraying movie star Audrey Hepburn smoking sold for $93,800 at an auction in Germany on Tuesday.

The Schlegel auction house declined to identify the buyer, who was represented by an agent. A minimum bid of $41,959 was set for the stamp, of which only five copies are known to exist.

In 2001, the German government printed 14 million Audrey Hepburn stamps as part of a series featuring movie stars including Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo. The print run was destroyed after Hepburn's son, Sean Ferrer, objected to the cigarette holder dangling from the actress' mouth and refused to grant copyright.

However, the Finance Ministry had already delivered advance copies of the Hepburn stamps to Deutsche Post for approval. Thirty of those proof copies escaped destruction when an unknown employee pocketed them and used them to send letters postmarked from Berlin.

The latest find is the fifth Hepburn stamp to surface since 2004. Auctioneer Elisabeth Schlegel said the rest probably ended up where most stamps do: in the trash can.

$93,800 for a piece of paper not even 1 inch square. No wonder we stamp collectors are a diminishing tribe.