Bond King Bill Gross is putting his rare stamp collection up for auction.
According to the Financial Times (FT) on June 8, Robert Siegel Auction Galleries in the U.S. plans to auction off the stamp collection submitted by Gross, co-founder of the Pacific Investment Management Co., on June 14 and 15.
The most notable stamp in the collection is the 1-cent Z-Grill stamp issued in 1868. This stamp, featuring Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, is one of only two known to exist. The New York Public Library holds the other copy. The expected auction price for this stamp is between $4 million and $5 million.
If the auction goes as expected, it will exceed the record set last year by the Inverted Jenny stamp, which sold for $2 million. The “Inverted Jenny” is a 24-cent stamp issued in the U.S. in 1918 and became popular among stamp collectors due to a printing error that featured the airplane in the center of the stamp upside down.
In 2019, Gross experienced family conflict when his youngest son, Nick Gross, attempted to auction the Inverted Jenny stamp that Gross had given him as a gift. Gross tried to stop the sale.
Gross’s interest in stamps is said to have originated from his mother. FT said his mother bought stamps in the 1930s and 1940s to afford Gross’s college tuition.
However, when Gross tried to sell his mother’s stamp collection, he was offered a low price, which sparked his interest in finding stamps that could serve as a better investment.
Gross explained that collecting is about creating order out of chaos, noting that this process appeals particularly to his personality.
The total expected auction price for the stamp collection he has put up for this auction reaches between $15 million and $20 million.
In recent years, Gross has sold over $50 million worth of stamps and donated $10 million to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., creating a gallery named after him within the museum.
Most Commented