Mystic Stamp Company

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.

The Franklin Z Grill, featured by the Mystic Stamp Co. in its advertising.

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 inverted Jenny block of four

In 1974 Mystic Stamp Co. was acquired by Maynard and Fannie Sundman, owners of Littleton Coin Company.[2] The couple's youngest son, Donald Sundman, was named head of the Mystic operation and all of Littleton's philatelic operations were moved from Littleton, New Hampshire, to Camden.[2]

At the Siegel auction of the Robert Zoellner collection in 1998, Mystic president Donald Sundman acquired one of two known specimens of the Franklin Z Grill for $935,000, at the time the highest price ever paid for a single US stamp.[3] Subsequently Mystic featured it in company advertising and listing it for sale in the catalogs.

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.[3]

See also

Footnotes
  1. Stamp company's grants designed to draw new collectors to hobby Dallas Morning News. 5 June 1993
  2. "Littleton Coin Company History," Littleton Coin Company, www.littletoncoin.com/
  3. Healey, Matthew (2 November 2005). "2 Collectors Set to Swap Rare Stamps". The New York Times.
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