Theresa Vargas on a stamp’s story: In the stamp collecting world, often the tiny square on the outside of an envelope is all that matters. It is the commodity that is coveted and traded and sold. But for some, there is the draw of the story behind the stamp — where it came from, the time it represents, the printing mistake that alters it just a bit from others like it.
And so it was with the Alexandria Blue Boy — a stamp that carried a love letter in 1847 between a couple that for many reasons should not have been.
They were second cousins. He was Presbyterian; she was Episcopalian. Relatives were watching.
One of the rarest stamps in the world, the Blue Boy sold for $1 million in 1981 and is estimated to be worth many times that now. Still, many wondered why this stamp — an Alexandria postmaster provisional printed on blue paper before U.S. government stamps were commonplace — survived when all others like it were lost or destroyed. If the envelope had been saved for sentimental reasons, did the letter also exist? If so, what did it say?
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