A valuable business letter with 9-Schilling stamps, which went from Hamburg to New York via Liverpool in 1859, will be auctioned on September 24. The starting bid is 60,000 euros, said the managing director of the auction house Heinrich Koehler in Wiesbaden, Dietrich Michelson. But he expects a higher price. “There will be fights over it.” Because the letter is “a grenade in postal history”.
The letter bore the largest known number of 9-shilling stamps from 1859, Michelson said. It was the first issue of stamps in Hamburg. “It’s a beautiful cover with the blue background, the red stamps and the four yellow stamps.” According to the auction house, it was 16 days on the road at the time.
The stamps are part of the 8th stamp auction of the collection of former Tengelmann boss Erivan Haub. The Haub collection has been auctioned since the summer of 2019. According to the Aktionshaus, Haub acquired the letter sent from Hamburg in 1988.
