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Rare Audrey Hepburn Stamp at Auction

By
Papa Razzi
@ May 26, 2009 11:00 AM
Permalink | Comments (0)
Said to be worth more than $40,000, the stamps were supposed to be destroyed after Hepburn's son objected to the cigarette holder and refused to grant copyright. Only five of these stamps are known to exist.

Update: BERLIN (AP) -- A rare stamp portraying movie star Audrey Hepburn smoking sold for euro67,000 ($93,800) at an auction in Germany on Tuesday. The Schlegel auction house declined to identify the buyer, who was represented by an agent.

A collector stands to make a tidy profit after discovering a rare stamp portraying movie star Audrey Hepburn smoking - one of a series that should have been incinerated by the German government.

In 2001, the government printed 14 million Audrey Hepburn stamps as part of a series featuring movie stars including Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo. The print run was destroyed after Hepburn's son, Sean Ferrer, objected to the cigarette holder dangling from the actress' mouth and refused to grant copyright.

But the Finance Ministry had already delivered advance copies of the Hepburn stamps to Deutsche Post for approval. Thirty of these proof copies escaped destruction when an unknown employee pocketed them and used them to send letters postmarked from Berlin.

A minimum bid of $41,959 has been set for the stamp at its auction Tuesday at Berlin's Kempinski Hotel Bristol.

The latest find is the fifth Hepburn stamp to surface since 2004. The other stamps probably ended up where most stamps do: in the trash can.

Ferrer said he hoped the collector would use proceeds from the auction to support cancer research or anti-smoking campaigns. His movie star mother died of colon cancer in 1993.


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