‘Once in a Lifetime Thing’ : Collector Pays $75,000 for Postage Stamp

So you want to grouse about paying almost a quarter for a postage stamp?

Consider this: Newport Beach lawyer Michael T. Walsh paid $75,000 for one Thursday. And the picture on it isn’t even right side up.

The stamp was issued by the Iranian government in 1950 and still is glued to an envelope. It is, according to a stamp broker, the most expensive Iranian stamp ever sold, and it is thought to be one of only two of its kind still in existence.

What makes the stamp unusual is that the picture on it, a rendering of Iran’s former postal service headquarters, is upside down--and what makes it valuable is its rarity. Only 100 of the stamps were printed before the discovery of the mistake. No one knows what happened to the other 98, said Marc Rousso, chairman of the firm that made the sale to Walsh.

The 39-year-old Walsh said Thursday that he didn’t buy his stamp primarily to make money. But that doesn’t mean that he’s not hoping it will appreciate quickly.

“If someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, I’d certainly think of selling it,” he said.

Walsh described himself as just one of an estimated 20 million stamp collectors in the United States. The remainder of his entire collection--5,000 stamps by his estimate--is worth only a third of what he paid for the Iranian stamp.

His purchase of the Iranian stamp was unusual for him, a “once in a lifetime thing,” he said.

He said he has one other relatively rare Iranian stamp that has an inverted portrait of the shah. Of its value, he would say only:

“You never know how much they’re worth until someone buys them.”

Walsh said he has been a stamp collector since his uncle gave him a small collection when he was 10 years old.

He said he learned of the Iranian stamp through an exchange to which he belongs. He bought the stamp--which originally cost 10 Iranian rials, the equivalent of 15 cents--from Coach Investments Inc. of New York City.

The price of the stamp grabs the attention of non-collectors, but it is far from the highest ever paid.

Three months ago, Coach Investments sold a one-of-a-kind, two-cent stamp issued in Pittsburgh in 1852 to a Japanese bank for a world-record-breaking $1.1 million. The stamp that previously held the record as the most expensive ever sold went for $1 million six years earlier.

Rousso, chairman of Coach Investments, said he has sold rare stamps worth a total of perhaps $100 million over the last quarter century. He said the price tags of single stamps fluctuate, depending on supply and demand.

Rousso would not reveal how much his firm paid for the Iranian stamp, but he said Walsh got it cheap.

“I have sold stamps not as rare for $100,000,” Rousso said. “I think he could make a fortune off it in the next few years.”