- The oldest piece of mail to use a pre-paid Penny Black stamp is set to be auctioned in New York.
- The British Penny Black was the first-ever adhesive postage stamp.
- The letter cover has a sale estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million, per Sotheby's.
The oldest surviving piece of mail to use a pre-paid postage stamp is set to be auctioned at Sotheby's in New York.
The letter cover is adorned with a British Penny Black postage stamp, the world's first-ever adhesive postage stamp, and is dated May 2, 1840, just one day after the new stamp was released in the UK and four days before it was valid for use.
The document, known as "The Genesis of Philately," is one of the earliest known examples of the Penny Black stamp.
It was previously displayed at the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in 2014.
In a press release at the time, the museum said that the cover was "the only known item carrying both the Penny Black and Mulready One Penny letter sheet," another postage pre-payment method that was also issued on May 1, 1840, and that featured ornate illustrations by the Irish painter William Mulready.
"The May 2, 1840, cover connects us to the very beginnings of philately and the modern postal system," Allen Kane, a former director of the museum, said.
The museum described it as a "rare philatelic gem." Philately is the study and collection of stamps.
According to Sotheby's, the original recipient of the letter was a 35-year-old manager of an ironworks in Northumberland, in the north of England.
William Blenkinsop Jr. received the envelope, which the enclosed letter has been lost, from a sender in London.
Blenkinsop Jr. appears to have opened the letter, "turned the wrapper inside out" to reveal the Mulready, and sent it on to a Mr. Blenkinsop — possibly his father — in Dalston, Carlisle, in the northwest of England, per Sotheby's.
"Surviving over 180 years, the ornate Mulready envelope sealed with a Penny Black revolutionized the way people from all walks of life correspond, exchange ideas, share news and express themselves," Richard Austin, Sotheby's global head of books & manuscripts, said in a statement on the document, per CNN.
"At the dawn of the AI age, this remarkable object speaks to our innate human desire for connection and the ways in which it has evolved to new heights in the two centuries since," he added.