One Cent Magenta by James Barron

Author:James Barron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Affirm Press

She sent the stamp to London, where the experts at the Royal Philatelic Society examined it and pronounced it genuine. She consigned it for an auction in London in October 1935, with a reserve—a minimum selling price— of $42,500, or at least $590,000 in 2016 dollars. The bidding opened at £3,500 ($16,000) and topped out at £7,500, $4,500 short of the threshold. The stamp was withdrawn without being sold, disappointing a Pemberton yet again. The final bid came from Percy Loines Pemberton, perhaps to avenge his father, Edward Loines Pemberton, who had declared the stamp genuine but had been late with his check in 1878.

Back in the United States, Colonel Edward Howland Robinson Green was prepared to pay $40,000 for the one-cent magenta. The New York Times reported that Green would have, “had he lived a month longer.” Green was an eccentric multimillionaire in his late sixties who, like Hind, bought everything in sight. He was the genial counterpoint to his mother, Hetty Green, who was known as the “Witch of Wall Street”—famous for her success, infamous for her stinginess, her pettiness, her nastiness. But his death in 1936 dashed the deal for the one-cent magenta. Later the Times said Mrs. Hind turned down another $40,000 offer, this time from a British collector. Like Hind in 1931, she then raised the price. She insisted she would not sell for less than $50,000. In 1938, she turned to another stamp dealer, Ernest G. Jarvis, who set a more realistic price of $37,500. Still it did not sell.

She had steadily increased the insurance coverage of the stamp over the years, eventually valuing the stamp at $48,800. But she had no passion for stamps, and probably no patience for them, either. “She has none of the reverence for the stamp that collectors feel for [the one-cent magenta],” a reporter observed, noting the irony of her claim on it: “A woman who never collected anything in her life owns a stamp that makes stamp collectors shiver in awe.” She did not express awe or affection for her most valuable possession. She merely said it was “terribly homely.” She tried to rid herself of the stamp, but not at a loss. She turned down offers ranging from $25,000 to $38,000 in 1940 before she entrusted the stamp to a retailer that was bigger and more “Barnumesque” than any that had handled the stamp before—Macy’s. Macy’s had a stamp department in those days (as did its rival, Gimbel’s), and promised exposure.

The promises came from Finbar B. Kenny, the precocious—he was in his twenties at the time—manager of Macy’s stamp department. He became the stamp’s guardian and promoter. Mrs. Hind became the stamp’s escort. He arranged for the one-cent magenta to go to the World’s Fair. She dressed the part, in a fur jacket, and was photographed looking at the one-cent magenta. In newspapers that did not print color photographs, caption writers had to explain: “That little black spot on the table [in front of Mrs. Hind] is worth $50,000.

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