Lot 91015 – 1869, 500c black, eleven stars, mint

1869, 500c black, eleven stars, a mint example with part original gum, well centred and with sharp impression, two light h.r., an exceedingly rare stamp to be found sound, nearly always encountered without gum, making this extremely desirable, one of the difficult and sought-after regular stamps of South American philately, with only 1,000 stamps issued, undoubtedly the rarest stamp of Bolivian philately; signed Hassel.

Note: Marcos G. Escalier wrote in his Sobohispo catalogue that there is a « mistery of considerable magnitude » to explain the scarcity of this stamp: the most accepted theory is that most of the remaining stamps were destroyed as there was then still a notable quantity available of the same denomination from the previous issue, the 500c « nine stars ». Marcos G. Escalier declared in 1988 4,000 stamps to have been issued, but according to later research and the expert Claus Lange, only 1,000 were printed.