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Stamps are getting dearer

Rare stamps in a class of their own

Joanna Pitman

Wednesday, 1st August 2007

Joanna Pitman advises investors who are wary of turbulent stock markets to investigate the world of philately, where values have risen steadily for 50 years

Stamps, it is said, are the most valuable commodity on earth by weight. An 1868 Benjamin Franklin stamp, for example — a standard-sized stamp weighing a fraction of a fraction of a gram — was bought recently for $2.97 million by an American investor. So the claim may well be true.

Rare and desirable stamps, in good condition, can make impressive investments. The GB30 index, which tracks the values of the 30 rarest Great Britain stamps, has ‘never once fallen in the last 50 years’, says Geoff Anandappa, investment portfolio manager at the stamp dealers Stanley Gibbons in London. ‘It has gone up by an average of

10.7 per cent per year over the last 50 years, and by 10 to 15 per cent per year in the last five years.’

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