Please help me stamp out my collector’s instinct

As philatelists rub their thighs with glee at the arrival in Britain of the 1c Magenta, Will Gore wonders how he can shift his assortment of pottery frogs

The world’s rarest stamp, the British Guiana 1c Magenta (PA Media)

It regularly annoys me that a first class stamp costs 85p. Never mind that I’m paying less than a quid for someone to transport my letter halfway across the country and deliver it through some lucky friend or relative’s letterbox – it’s still an outrage.

By rights then, I should have choked on my non-self-seal envelope at the news that the world’s rarest stamp had been bought by a UK-based dealer for £6.2m. It doesn’t even have a pretty picture on it, and you certainly can’t use it to send a postcard.

Yet the instinctive collector in me couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe at the artefact’s staggering value – not only from a monetary point of view, but from a historical one too. The British Guiana 1c Magenta is the only surviving stamp from a small batch printed in what is now Guyana, after a ship carrying a delivery of standard stamps from Britain turned up with the wrong order. Should have used DPD.