Rare 1847 Wine Merchant Letter Becomes World's Most Valuable Due to Unique Stamps

On October 4, 1847, Edward Francis, a wine merchant from Port Louis in the British colony of Mauritius, sent a routine letter to his partners in Bordeaux, France. The letter's content was mundane, merely confirming receipt of 48 wine barrels and reporting that nearly a third had been sold. However, this letter, now known as the "Bordeaux Letter," has become the most valuable letter in the world, estimated at over 5 million dollars.

The extraordinary value stems from two extremely rare postage stamps affixed to the letter: the "Mauritius Blue" and the "Mauritius Pink." These stamps were mistakenly created in 1847 when an engraver added the inscription "Post Office" next to Queen Victoria's portrait instead of the intended "Post Paid." Only 500 copies were printed before the error was corrected. Today, only 27 of these stamps survive worldwide, with 12 blue and 15 pink, making them legendary treasures among philatelists.

Clean blue stamps without postal cancellations can fetch between 11.4 and 17 million dollars, but their rarity means they rarely change hands. The Bordeaux Letter itself was last sold at auction in 1993 and has since been held in a private collection by a mysterious collector in Singapore.