A postage stamp from British Guiana (now Guyana) dating back to the 19th Century will be up for sale in New York in June. It is expected to be valued at a “record price”, according to the auction house, Sotheby’s.

The 1856 one-cent Magenta is believed to be the last of the British one-cent stamp and is said to be the most well-known of rare stamps..
According to the BBC, the one-cent Magenta, which collectors regard as the world’s most famous rare stamp, might sell for up to $20m (£12m; 15m euros), the innovative global art business, Sotheby’s said.

The stamp, according to the BBC, has set a world record each of the three times it has been sold at auction.
The current record for a single stamp sold at auction is $2.3m.

You’re not going to find anything rarer than this,” Allen Kane, Smithsonian National Postal Museum told the BBC.
“This is just incredible because it has always been a rarity,” Richard Ashton, Sotheby’s stamp specialist, told the BBC.

The stamp was bought in 1980 by John du Pont, a chemical industry millionaire, who kept it largely out of public view, locked away in a vault.
He was jailed for shooting dead an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler in 1996 and died in 2010. The stamp is being sold as part of his estate.