<\/p>\n
\nThe 1903 4d stamp with an upside-down picture of Lake Taup\u014d.
\nPhoto: Mowbray Collectibles\/supplied\n<\/p>\n
A New Zealand postage stamp has sold for $260,000 – the highest amount ever paid.<\/p>\n
The stamp dates back to 1903, featuring a misprinted picture of an upside-down Lake Taup\u014d.<\/p>\n
A US buyer purchased it at a Mowbray Collectables auction. The last time it sold was in 1998, when it went to New Zealand Post for $125,000.<\/p>\n
It originally cost four pence.<\/p>\n
The stamp was last publicly displayed in 2005 at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s ‘Stamped: Celebrating New Zealand’s postal history’ exhibition.<\/p>\n
“The stamp was used in 1904 on a letter sent from Picton,Mowbray Collectibles said on its website. “It first surfaced in London in 1930, selling the following year at auction for just \u00a361.<\/p>\n
“It then vanished into a private French collection for half a century, only re-emerging in New Zealand in 1982, when it was displayed at the Palmpex exhibition.”<\/p>\n
Also up for auction this weekend were “a huge range” of the world’s first postage stamps – the Penny Blacks from the UK – valued at up to $20,000 each, and “popular gold coins and medals from the New Zealand Wars”.<\/p>\n
Mowbray Collectibles founder John Mowbray said the Ministry of Culture and Heritage agreed the stamp could leave the country, if sold offshore.<\/p>\n