By Rob Beeson, Online Marketing Manager
Before I joined the GWCT in 2013 I worked at Stanley Gibbons. For those unfamiliar with the name, Stanley Gibbons is the biggest name in stamp collecting, in fact it is ‘the home of stamp collecting’.
I joined SG in 2003 and at the time had no idea that individual stamps could be worth millions of pounds. By the time I arrived, the company was already beginning to market stamps as alternative investments, akin to fine art or wine, where rarity and condition are key to determining an item’s value.
Most of the rarest and most valuable stamps tend to be errors – stamps that have been printed incorrectly. They are usually destroyed once the mistake has been detected but in some cases, errors can slip through the cracks. The ‘Inverted Jenny’, a 1918 U.S stamp featuring a plane printed upside down is perhaps the most famous example. Only 100 are known to have survived and the last example to be sold went for over $1.5m (around £1.2m) in 2018.
What has all this got to do with the GWCT? Well, at the back of our stock cupboard we recently found two mint condition GWCT Scotland badges IN RED! All the others are blue! They’re errors!
We have therefore listed one on eBay in an attempt to raise some much-needed funds at this difficult time. You can place your bids here.
Remember – there were 100 Inverted Jenny stamps and they sell for over £1m. What must these two badges be worth? And what will they be worth in the future?