Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll find out why a 1-cent postage stamp could become the most expensive U.S. stamp ever sold. We’ll also get details on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s order forbidding National Guard soldiers to carry long guns when they are on duty in the subway.
William Gross said to sell it all, a command that would have made Wall Street shudder if he had been talking about his huge portfolio of bonds.
But he was talking about his huge portfolio of postage stamps, and Charles Shreve — a stamp dealer who built Gross’s collection for him — has spent years carrying out the sell order.
The sell-off will conclude in New York with a sale that will feature a tiny 1-cent stamp from 1868 — a used stamp with a silhouette of Benjamin Franklin that is partly blocked by the curve of the postmark. It is known among collectors as the “Z-grill.”
The auction house that will sell it on June 14 is predicting that it will go for $4 million to $5 million. That would make it the most valuable U.S. postage stamp. It would still trail the 1-cent magenta from British Guiana, which sold for $8.3 million in 2021.
What makes the Z-grill so valuable is not something that is easily seen, in contrast to the upside-down biplanes from the famously misprinted sheet of Inverted Jennies. “Everyone knows the Inverted Jenny,” Shreve said. But “eyes glaze over” when he tries to explain the Z-grill and why it is called that, he said.
There is an easier explanation, one that always makes collectors salivate: rarity. The Z-grill is one of only two such stamps known to exist. The other has been owned by the New York Public Library since the 1920s. They were apparently the only survivors from among thousands printed. The others were thrown away, having been sent by “tax assessors mailing income tax forms in March 1868” and publishers dispatching circulars, according to Scott Trepel, the president of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, the firm handling the sale.
Gross ended up with the Z-grill in 2005 in a trade, arranged by Shreve, for a plate block of Inverted Jennies. The trade, whose value was put at roughly $3 million, completed Gross’s collection, begun in the 1990s when Gross decided to buy every U.S. stamp from the 19th century then listed in the Scott catalog, the stamp collectors’ bible.
Shreve spent big at stamp auctions. Gross said in 2016 that he had spent more than $100 million amassing the collection.
But Gross “didn’t just say, ‘Stick up your hand and buy,’” Shreve said — Gross did his research. On Sunday afternoons, “he’d have the 49ers on and look at the catalog and call and say, ‘Where’s this stamp?’ I’d say, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll go find it.’”
Gross has said that stamps gave him a way to “reconnect with my childhood.” Shreve said that Gross’s mother bought stamps when he was growing up, telling Gross that they would increase in value and “that’s how we will send you to college.” They did not. “He said, ‘I’m going to prove stamps are a good investment — she just bought the wrong ones,’” Shreve said.
Buying the right ones became Shreve’s job after he connected with Gross, which was after Gross had already spent more than $1 million at his first stamp auction in the 1990s.
The Z-grill was created to be tamper-resistant. After the Civil War, the Post Office worried that people would rub off postmarks, with help from chemicals that broke down the dyes in the ink, and reuse the stamps.
The Post Office’s printers began experimenting with ways to dent paper, essentially embossing the sheets that stamps were printed on with tiny shapes that would absorb the ink from postmarks, making them harder to wipe away. The printers developed several grill patterns, which were later assigned identifying letters.
Gross’s Z-grill came on the market in 1977, selling for $90,000, and again in 1986, going for $418,000, including the buyer’s premium. That completed the collection of an earlier financier with a passion for philately, Robert Zoellner. It was sold again in 1998 for $935,000.
It completed Gross’s collection, and with nothing left to buy he “was losing interest,” Shreve said.
“One day, he said, ‘Come and get everything,’” Shreve said, and in 2007 they began selling the stamps from Gross’s international collection. He held onto his U.S. stamps until 2018, when Siegel auctioned the first batch. Since then, Shreve said, he has sold more than $24 million worth of stamps through the Siegel firm, donating all the proceeds to charities.
Gross said through a spokeswoman that “getting all of the rarest stamps took patience, but the case was the fun part.” He will “definitely feel sorry” when the Z-Grill is sold, he said, “but the person who buys it will have something no one else can.”
Weather
Expect a mostly cloudy day that will become sunny, with temperatures in the high 40s and wind gusts persisting through the evening. Tonight it will be mostly clear, with temperatures in the 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until March 24 (Purim).
The latest New York news
National Guard soldiers won’t carry long guns in the subway
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office made a quick adjustment after she announced that National Guard soldiers would be deployed to patrol the subway system and inspect passengers’ bags: The soldiers will not carry long guns at bag-check stations.
The change was ordered on Wednesday for implementation on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the governor. My colleague Hurubie Meko reported that early images of the deployment show soldiers standing near turnstiles and holding long guns.
Hochul, a Democrat, said that the move to flood the subway system with reinforcements — 750 soldiers from the New York National Guard and 250 personnel from the State Police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — would help commuters and visitors feel safe.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, took issue with that idea but called the ban on long guns at bag-checking stations a “relief.” She said that the Guard’s presence underground remained “an unnecessary overreaction based on fear, not facts.” She added that the deployment “will, unfortunately, create a perfect storm for tension, escalation and further criminalization of Black and brown New Yorkers.”
In January, there was a 45 percent increase in major crimes in the subway compared with the same month last year. That uptick prompted Mayor Eric Adams to order an additional 1,000 police officers into the subway system. Reported crime rates in the system declined in February, according to city data.
METROPOLITAN diary
‘Don’t overthink it’
Dear Diary:
I was walking down the street with my dog on a Sunday in Carroll Gardens. As I got to the corner, a man carrying a large brown duffel bag was walking hurriedly in my direction.
“Really sorry about this!” he called out as he stopped at the corner.
My dog and I both looked at him, but he was looking up.
“Just throw them down to me,” he yelled. “Don’t overthink it.”
I followed his gaze up to the top-floor corner apartment of the building we were standing in front of. A woman was at the window holding a red sneaker.
“I just want to wait for … ” she said, her voice trailing off. She gestured toward me.
I smiled and waved up at her, and then continued on around the corner. Once we were a short distance away, I paused and turned around.
I looked at my dog. My dog looked at me. We both looked up at the apartment as a red sneaker sailed through the air.
I couldn’t see the man anymore, but I could tell he had caught the sneaker.
“Great,” he shouted. “Now the other one!”
