Just have your stamp book ready for a phenomenal addition. At least, should you want to dig deep. For soon the holy grail among stamp collectors, the ''One-cent 'Z' Grill of 1868,'' will disappear under the auction hammer. Expected to be the most valuable American specimen ever.
Bill Gross, a 79-year-old investor and fund manager, is best known as co-founder of the company PIMCO. But in addition, he also has a career as an avid stamp collector. Gross has enlisted the help of auction house Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries to sell his collection.
When the collection disappears under the hammer, it is expected to set a new standard in stamp-land. In fact, Siegel's experts estimate that the entire collection will fetch between $15 million and $20 million, with even several stamps individually likely to fetch more than $1 million.
The star of the show? The stamp known as the 'Z' Grill : "We expect the stamp to sell for $4 million or more, which would make it the most valuable U.S. stamp ever sold at auction." Thus Scott Trepel, president of Siegel Auction Galleries.
Only two copies of the 1868 One-cent 'Z' Grill are known to exist. One of these copies was donated to the New York Public Library in 1925, while the other remained in the hands of William H. Gross, making it the only one-cent 'Z' grill available to collectors. Currently, Gross is the only known owner of this rare stamp.
To understand why the specimen is so rare, we must go back to America just after the Civil War. Postage stamps were relatively new at the time, and there was concern about their reuse. To prevent this, among other things, people developed an embossed pattern that was made into the paper. The pattern of dots allowed the ink of the stamp to be absorbed faster by the paper, making it more difficult to wash the stamp ink off the stamp.
More than a century ago, experts classified the various grills from "A" to "H." The "Z" Grill, named for its mysterious and distinctive characteristics, was included in the Scott Catalog. Of the "Z" Grill, only two 1 ¢, two 15 ¢ and six 10 ¢ stamps have ever been found and certified as genuine.
On June 14 and 15, the William H. Gross collection will disappear under the hammer.
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