British Guiana 1c Black on Magenta: History & Selling Shares

Thanks for letting us know that, Michael (Londonbus1), but I am sorry to hear it.  I thought that perhaps the stamp would be on display on a more-or-less permanent basis.  It's too bad, as I was going to make a post saying that I thought it was one of the benefits of the SG ownership, i.e. that the stamp would be available for viewing on a regular basis now.  Oh, well.

Just an additional point: I have taken the thread that I started back in March about a webinar on the history of the British Guiana 1c Black on Magenta, and I have merged those posts into this thread, as I think that the story of this unique stamp should be kept together as much as possible on TSF.

If you haven't already seen a bit about the history, please look back in this thread now to find some highlights from that presentation.

“Audio book” ? Chris what’s going on. I have the hard copy of the actual book! shame on you taking the easy way out 😀😀😀😀😀😀

I've read the above book as well and it was both fascinating AND entertaining, like the one guy who willed the house to his ex wife... which was very nice of him since it was HER house, LOL!

But Alex, like you, over the past two years of the pandemic I began to go walking when all my other physical activities were cancelled (SOCCER!), and audiobooks have been my go-to. I've also found as I age that I simply don't enjoy *reading* non-fiction books, but do certainly enjoy them in audio format, oddly enough.

There are many reasons not to keep it on display - security, preservation, etc. I assume it was there for marketing purposes.

The plan was always to take it down when the Exhibition ended. I was there a few days later and they told me the details then. "There is no plan to show it again here", she said.
No doubt it will be on display at other venues during events.

Londonbus1

The decision to create "partial share ownership" was a truly daft idea, and appears to have fallen completely flat (there is a very good thread in another stamp forum about the whole sorry saga of Gibbons and this misadventure with their acquisition of the 1c Magenta)

The smarter thing if they wanted to click into the "hip" market and raise money would have been to create certified Non-Fungible Token versions of the stamp. Gibbons own the original, they could easily make a digital version of the stamp in a run of X thousant that could then be bought by the punters who think NFTs are the next big thing. But that was not the route they went, and now they have a big magenta albatross around their necks.

Gibbons in its current form is living on borrowed time, and if it is still around by 2025 I will be more than a little surprised.

Thanks for your post, Alex (vikingeck).

I think it would be a good idea to merge these posts into the existing thread, but I am unable to do that using my phone.

Steve (Admin) or LB1 (Londonbus1), can one of you help with this?

I wonder how many shares have been sold. They are currently having a sale on the shares - now only $125.56 each.

Where did you find the information on % sold? I can only find that there are 1649 collectors showpiece.com/1c-magenta. At 65% sold some individuals must be buying a quantity of shares.

I'm sorry daniel but the 65% contains 49% that Stanley Gibbons retained/bought soon after the opening offer expired as I reported on a previous post.

They have therefore only sold around 16%. It hasn't helped in that a few months back they added this to the FAQs, indicating the sale might infringe USA financial rules.



As I've said before, I wish they would stick with selling stamps and publications.

The initial offering closed with 34.7% remaining to be sold. Doesn't look like it really generated much interest since it took 6 months to sell the 16.3%.
It would be interesting to see a graph on the sales (were the sales mostly front end or evenly spread out).

Sadly, the share price is now down to 1.4 pence and the marketplace for trading of the magenta pieces, promised by May 2022, hasn't materialised.