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Glen Stephens
Monthly "Stamp
News"
Market Tipster Column
July 2009
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In late 2007 German metal worker Thomas Boche purchased a large box containing thousands of envelope clippings with stamps on them (i.e. “kiloware”) through ebay, and paid 55½ Euros. When Boche looked through the box he found a number of stamps suitable for his collection, and one German stamp with an Audrey Hepburn design which he did not recognise. In the beginning he did not pay much attention to this find. Only months later did he search for the unidentified Hepburn stamp on the internet, and found newspaper articles mentioning a record sale price for it in 2006 |
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He contacted the auctioneer of the previous Hepburn discovery, Ulrich Felzmann of Dusseldorf. Boche lived nearby and made an appointment for the next day. Felzmann’s offered his stamp (now called copy #4) illustrated nearby, at the “IBRA” Essen auction on May 9, 2009 where it sold for 75,932 Euros when taxes and buyer fees were added. Or $A132,122 as this was typed. The stamp bears a cancel from the “Briefzentrum 13” (Berlin-North in Hennigsdorf) sorting centre. I am advised by email from an executive at Felzmann’s, that the buyer is the owner of a well known family business company, located in one of the bigger cities of Lower Saxony.
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By remarkable co-incidence a fortnight later on May 26, Berlin auctioneers Schlegels offered yet another example – copy #5. It sold in the room to an agent for 53,500 Euros. After commission and sales tax etc was added, the invoice price was 67,000 Euros or approx $A116,583 as this article was filed. In Associated Press reports carried by many newspapers around the world, auctioneer Andreas Schlegel said that the sellerwished to remain anonymous. Schlegel added: “He’s worried that if his picture is printed in the newspaper his friends will come to him and say, ‘Hey, you got that stamp from me." That stamp has part of a double ring cancel in lower corner – proving once again Germans no NOT like undated cancels, and hence the $A15,500 lesser price than a fortnight earlier. |
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The story of the Hepburn stamp began in 2001 when the German post office (Deutsche Post) prepared to issue a set of semi-postal stamps featuring movie stars, including Audrey Hepburn. They were to be issued as panes of 10 (two of each of the 5 stamps) and a booklet pane that resembled a souvenir sheet. Some 14 million Hepburn stamps were printed. |
Hepburn’s son objected
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At the last minute one of Hepburn’s sons, Sean Ferrer objected to the stamp design and refused copyright approval. Reportedly as an image of his mother smoking a cigarette was not one he approved of. (Hepburn died of cancer in 1993.) A 37¢ Hepburn stamp (without cigarette) was issued without incident in June 2003 by the USA by way of comparison. The German post office ordered that all the Audrey Hepburn stamps be destroyed. The issue was re-designed and eventually released October 11, 2001. A Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman stamp in the original German set was also withdrawn around this time. The issued set quickly substituted stamps depicting Greta Garbo, and a reel of film. The other 3 issued stamps depicted Marilyn Monroe, Jean Gabin, and Charlie Chaplin. Three panes of 10 stamps each had already been sent to the German Ministry of Finance, but it is believed that they were not returned and not destroyed. The whereabouts of all these 30 stamps today is not known. I presume the 6 x Bogart/Bergman stamps must also exist in kiloware from these same 3 sheetlets? Three years later, in late 2004, the first used example #1 of the Hepburn stamp was discovered by Werner Duerrschmidt, a stamp collector and mailman in Bavaria, a German state. He found the 110+50 pfennig stamp in a mixture of used on-paper stamps sent to him by friends. Duerrschmidt’s example was cancelled Berlin, October 14, 2003. |
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'Sensation Perfekt!'
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This was reported as front page news in German stamp magazines dated February 2005 calling it a 'Sensation Perfekt!'. The stamp became quite a media hit, and dealer and collector bodies reported the widespread mainstream press has proven very positive for philately in Germany. After the national media circus that this initial find predicated, another copy was found, postmarked Berlin November 2, 2003. This example #2 was discovered by a collector in Frankfurt au Main. It was found among stamp clippings he received from the incoming mail of a company in Wolfsburg, Germany. |
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This latter stamp #2 was invoiced for Euro 69,437.60 (then approximately $A112,000) when it was auctioned June 1, 2005 by Heinrich Kohler in Wiesbaden, Germany. That stamp was on the front cover of the August 2005 "Stamp News". The €20,000 estimate proved super conservative. I emailed the Auction firm and Dieter Michelson told me: “final invoice price for the stamp was 69.437,60 Euro, which includes a 17% commission and 16% VAT on the commission.” |
Price went UP not down!
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A third stamp discovered SHOULD have meant the price of all three went down, not up, as each new discovery lessens the potential value of all copies - that is the conventional thinking. Wrong. Another copy of this 110+50 pfennig German stamp was later discovered in kiloware and sold for over DOUBLE the June 2005 price! As television cameras recorded the occasion, this #3 example of Germany’s unissued Audrey Hepburn stamp was hammered down October 7, 2005 for 135,000 Euros. |
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With commissions and taxes, the buyer paid a total of 169,000 Euro (then $A272,000). This realisation easily breaks the price record for a post-war German stamp. Indeed I imagine it is easily a price record for ANY single stamp or even multiple issued anywhere post-war. As a data point, my column last month reported the highest auction price for ANY British Commonwealth QE2 era stamp was achieved this year – and was “only” about $A75,000 for a Cyprus 1960 used 30 mil. That Hepburn stamp #3, was the star lot in Ulrich Felzmann’s 111th auction held October 5-8 in Dusseldorf, Germany. Felzmann is not to be confused with the similarly named David Feldman Auctions in Switzerland, who also sells many rare pieces. The stamp was purchased by Gaby Bennewirtz, acting on behalf of her husband Gerd Bennewirtz, an investment manager and stamp collector - also living in the Dusseldorf area. |
The most attractive example
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Gaby Bennewirtz later told the German press: “he would actually have been willing to pay a bit more.” It is the most attractive of all the copies I think, and being on piece with corner sheet margins, and with a superb dated cancel, is as good a copy as you could ever hope for! Hence the massive price I imagine. Germans will always pay top money for top quality. |
Shown nearby is winning bidder Gaby Bennewirtz holding the now famous $A272,000 stamp. That example of the unissued Audrey Hepburn stamp #3 has part of the top left hand corner selvedge attached from the pane of 10. The stamp is cancelled Feb. 11, 2004, at Kleinmachnow, a suburb of Berlin. According to the lot description in the auction catalogue, the stamp was found in kiloware. All over the world, such stamps are often sold unsorted by the kilogram as sourced by charities etc, hence the name.
Great for Philately
On the day after the auction, the news of
this record hammer price had been published
in 122 German newspapers. Great for stamps. I
have a very large business sideline selling
such "kiloware" material I get from
charities etc, as do many other dealers, and
I sell over a ton weight a year: www.zoekeli.notlong.com
Collectors seem to love the fun of
fossicking through it, and with a potential
$270,000 “find” possible - little wonder.
All 5 copies found of this stamp came from
kiloware.
So the May 9, 2009 copy #4 sale at 75,932
Euros - whilst a truly massive sum, is well
down in Euros on the previous sale, but
about 10% higher in Euros than copy #2 sold
for.
“I’d have paid more”
.jpg)
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The 67,000 Euros sale of copy #5, a fortnight later on May 26 was a whisker short of the price of copy #2, but lower than #4 obtained. Proving once again that German collectors INSIST on dated cancels - the neat “corner CTO” type cancel on #5 would have delighted most Australian collectors! |
Germans LOVE dated
cancels
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Fetching 8,932 Euros
(=$A15,500) less than #4 when sold a fortnight later in the same
country, really goes to prove how important those dated cancels are.
As this only is the fifth copy discovered, I can only again urge all readers to CHECK your kiloware! ALL copies offered of this stamp have sold for well over $A100,000 - indeed one fetched $A272,000. That is MAJOR world rarity price level for any single stamp, even for the imperf “Classics”. The legendary 1854 Western Australia 4d “Inverted Swan” often attains lesser price levels than these. Indeed, this is the only “Inverted Jenny” of our stamp lifetime, and I have followed this story keenly from day #1, and have done about 100 hours of research done on it. This article is in fact the ONLY place that all copies are recorded and outlined in detail I believe. There clearly are more copies out there – and presumably someone is yet to discover a Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman stamp from the same original German set. Let me know if you find one! |
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