Mystic Stamp Company

Company logo

The Mystic Stamp Company, based in Camden, New York, since 1923, is a mail-order postage stamp dealer, one of the largest in operation and notable for both its promotion of stamp collecting as a hobby^[1] and for its acquisition of the Z Grill, the rarest United States stamp. The company deals primarily in US stamps and supplies, with some supplies of stamps and supplies made by foreign postal authorities and the United Nations Postal Administration.

Like most stamp dealers, sales of stamps and postal products are made through printed catalogs as well as an online catalog that have the details of all the current stamps on offer.

The Z Grill

At the Siegel auction of the Robert Zoellner collection in 1998, Mystic president Donald Sundman acquired the Z Grill for $935,000, the highest price ever paid for a single US stamp.^[2] Subsequently Mystic featured it in company advertising and listing it for sale in the catalogs.

The inverted Jenny block of four

In late October 2005 Sundman traded the Z Grill for the unique Inverted Jenny plate block, worth slightly over $3 million, from U.S. financier Bill Gross, thus giving Gross the only complete collection of 19th century US stamps.^[2]

References

1. ^ Stamp company's grants designed to draw new collectors to hobby Dallas Morning News. 5 June 1993
2. ^ ^{a b} 2 Collectors Set to Swap Rare Stamps New York Times. 2 November 2005

External links

• Mystic homepage