A Very Unusual Postage Stamp

David Stargel David Stargel is the owner of several web businesses and enjoys writing articles about current trends in the business world. He has over 25 years of experience in business marketing and sales. Get more information regarding postage stamps.
Source: Article Devil

No comments posted.

---

Add Comment
You do not have permission to comment. If you log in, you may be able to comment.

1: What to do if you need shoes for your mismatched foot!
2: Lingerie - the perfect accessory
3: Shopping for Handbags
4: Baby Baskets Make an Interesting Gift
5: Buying an Electric Griddle

Remember: The article body, title, author bio and links may not be changed or removed. By publishing this article, you agree to all the terms in our our Terms of Service.

---

<h1>A Very Unusual Postage Stamp</h1> Z is for Zillionaire<br><br>What’s a Z Grill? Is it the latest Infomercial gadget promising to remove all the fat, retain all the flavor, and reduce all the guilt associated with preparing your favorite but normally forbidden foods?<br><br>Is it the technique which Zorro used to interrogate the bad guys before dispatching them with the three trademark swipes of his sword?<br><br>No, the Z Grill is neither of those, and you could probably keep guessing for a long time, before you got it right. The Z Grill in question is, of all things, a rather unassuming blue-and-white 1868 one-cent postage stamp, bearing the profile of the first US Postmaster general, Benjamin Franklin. What, besides its age, makes it anything but an old stamp?<br><br>The Z Grill, in late 2005, was at one end of a trade between philatelists, at the other end of which was a block of four of the most famous stamps on God’s green earth, the 1918 inverted Jennies which had sold in November of that year for a world-record $2.97 million. The inverted Jennies had been issued to commemorate the opening of the first US airmail route, and were created when one sheet of them was placed into the printer’s upside-down, so that the Curtiss Jennie bi-plane on their faces appears to be performing a loop-the- loop.<br><br>Why was a four-for-one swap of this nature considered desirable to Bill Gross, the bond-trader and financier who had so recently shelled out nearly $750,000 each for their Jennies? Because Bill Gross had been collecting 19th century stamps for over twelve years and, believe it or not, had all of them, except the one-cent 1868 Z-Grill, of which only tow were known to exist. The Z-Grill takes its unusual name from an ink- absorbent grid on its back which was designed show cancellation marks clearly so that the stamp could not be used more than once.<br><br>There were a variety of grill designs tested, including the A, C, and E grills in addition to the Z grill, but one reasons the Z-Grill stamps are so highly valued is that they were the first to make it into production with stamps showing up on essays in 1867. The reason for its extreme rarity is that, like today, junk mailing carried the lowest postal rates, so that vast majority of the one-cent Z-grills were almost certainly tossed it the trash along with the mailto which they were affixed.<br><br>How badly did Bill Gross want the Z-Grill? Enough so that in 1998, he had forced Donald Sundeman of the Mystic Stamp Company to pay a record $985,000 for it at auction. But Gross went one better by also becoming the money behind the $2.97 million purchase of the block of four Inverted Jennies, meaning that his refusal to meet Sundeman’s bid for the Z-Grill in 1998 cost him $1.12 million when he traded the Jennies for the Z-Grill just seven years later.<br><br>The amount by which Gross’ now completed collection of 19th century stamps appreciated the moment the Z-Grill joined it, however, almost certainly eclipsed the $1.12 million figure. The only other known Z-Grill, in fact, is part of the Benjamin Miller Collection at the New York Public Library, and will never be sold. So the possibility of another complete collection of 19th century postage stamps existing anywhere is vanishingly small.<br> <h2>About the Author</h2> David Stargel David Stargel is the owner of several web businesses and enjoys writing articles about current trends in the business world. He has over 25 years of experience in business marketing and sales. Get more information regarding <a href=\"http://shoppingproductsguide.com/special-products/was-this-the-start-of-stamp-collecting.html\" target=\"_blank\">postage stamps</a>.<br><br>Source: <a href="http://www.articledevil.com">Article Devil</a>