Brunei's $40 Stamp

Last month was His Majesty's 40th Anniversary of his coronation. I wrote about the stamps that were issued specially to mark the occassion which you can read here.

Together with the set of stamps were two miniature sheets. One contained all the stamps and the other contained a very high valued stamp of $40. At the time of the stamps, the lady at the philatelic unit informed me that the high value miniature sheets were being reprinted. There was a wrong colour or something like that. I did not get mine until today. So here it is:

When I went to the counter last month, the lady said she would reserve me a number - the miniature sheet has a serial number. I just said 500 as the number that popped up in my head and I got that 000500. I should have asked for something like 888 or something.

This is not the first time Brunei postal authorities issued high valued miniature sheet. The previous one was to mark the occassion of His Majesty's 60th Birthday. The authorities issued a $60 stamp on miniature sheet and sold it for $235. The previous one to that was when His Majesty celebrated his 50th birthday. The postal authorities issued a miniature sheet with five $50 stamp and the miniature sheet had a face value of $250. Then I was not an avid collector and $250 was a lot of money to pay for stamps. Nowadays I am willing to pay much more. Much to my regret that $250 miniature sheet cost me $600 at a philatelic store in Singapore in March.

So the lesson would be - get your hands on this $40 miniature sheet. It would rise up in value in the future and this is a pretty good investment.