A lot of casual news consumers are asking themselves, “what the hell is a Z grill” right now.
Those of us who know the rarest US stamps can bask in our superior knowledge.
The Z grill is in the news as perhaps the greatest ever collection of US stamps goes up for auction.
It’s a feature - designed to reduce forgery - on a 1-cent 1868 Benjamin Franklin portrait stamp.
This little piece of paper should shortly become the world’s most expensive stamp if it sells for the $5 million predicted at an auction of William H Gross’s collection.
It’s worth so much because it’s so rare.
These stamps were made with a textured surface designed to soak up ink used to cancel a stamp on use. The Z-type grill lasted only a short period and produced some of the United States’ rarest stamps.
The United States was a growing world power when the adhesive postage stamp was pioneered in the UK.
The US already had a number of private postal companies and was quick to adopt the British reforms in theory.
However, it wasn’t until 1847 that legislation was passed that produced the US’s first national stamps.
Since then many many billions of stamps have been produced in America.
Most are extremely common, but America has produced some extremely beautiful, desirable, and rare stamps and these are the 5 rarest US stamps.
1 - The Alexandria "Blue Boy"
This stamp was printed in a newspaper office as an emergency stop-gap.
It’s a great thing for collectors that the rarest American stamp is sort-of not a stamp, and also just about the oldest.
We’ve seen that the US was somewhat slow to put all the pieces in place to run the postal service they wanted.
That included stamps.
The 1847 act that set up uniform postal rates neglected to mention stamps. So, in true American pioneer spirit, some post masters simply made their own.
These are all rare and collectible, but this blue example from Alexandria in Virginia is the rarest.
There is only one.
Another six copies but they are printed on buff paper.
It’s a used stamp on an envelope, and in 2019 it went for $1.18 million.
It has a lovely story.
The letter it carried was a message of secret love. “Burn as usual” James Wallace Hooff wrote to his amour, Janett.
The envelope was not chucked in the fire. The Hooff’s became a family, and some 60 years later their daughter found the stamp and sold it for a hefty $3,0000.
It subsequently became the first US stamp through the $1 million barrier.
Tantalisingly, we know that there must once have been another Alexandria Blue Boy, as they were produced in pairs.
Because it’s not a standard-issue, some purists don’t count the Blue Boy as a stamp. Buyers don’t seem to care.
2 - Z grill Benjamin Franklin and others
There are just two known examples of this stamp. Only one can be bought.
The Benjamin Franklin 1-cent of 1868 is usually described as the rarest US stamp.
There’s little argument with that, but the Z-grill experiment produced a couple of other gems too.
The Z grill was pushed into the surface of the stamp during manufacture. The indentations it left in the stamp were designed to make it harder to reuse stamps.
Most of the shapes use to carry out this act had vertical lines, only the Z-grill has horizontal grooves.
There are 2 known Benjamin Franklin Z grills, one of which will be sold in New York in June.
But no stamp is a single work and the Z grills were used across the range of US stamps.
So, there are also just 2 known 15-cent Lincoln stamps.
There are 6 known 10-cent Washington Z-grill stamps.
It’s thought that around 1,000 of each were originally printed.
The Z grill was cut in favour of the F Grill, then a D, then an E grill, but in the end all grills were ditched.
The Benjamin Franklin Z grill owned by Bill Gross is expected to set a world record in June.
The only other known example was owned by Benjamin Miller and is in the New York Public Library.
3 - B-grill 3-cent Washington
The grill series were a failed experiement. They didn't last long, ensuring collectors will always love them.
The B grill is another part of the same story.
It was bigger than the other grills the US Post Office tried to use and that may have been at the root of its fast failure, which has been great news for its owners.
The only known examples of B-grill stamps are a set of four 3-cent stamps with Washington portraits, on a letter from Mason, Texas.
The cover was sold for around $1 million in a private sale in 2008.
4 - A-grill 5-cent Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the Declaration of Independence and has been on many US stamps.
The first grill is the last of our collection of grill rarities.
It started the short-lived experiment and didn’t fare well.
The grilled paper was weak and it interfered with the perforations, making it harder to tear stamps off their sheets.
As a first attempt, the A grill’s use was fairly limited.
Just 2,000 of the 5-c and 30-c stamp were printed and there are now fewer than 5 and 10 respectively of those stamps known to be still around.
In 2019 a brown 5-cent Jefferson A grill was sold for $340,000.
The history of grills and some other rarities are fascinating and we'll be covering them in full in a future blog.
5 - Inverted Jenny
The most famous image in all of philately.
Of all the wonderful American rarities this is the best known.
A look at it tells you why.
An upside down plane is irresistible.
It’s got a great story too.
A collector called William T Robey successfully predicted that the two-stage printing of a new stamp celebrating the United States’ new airmail service might produce an invert.
By extraordinary chance he went to a post office where a sheet of those inverts was for sale.
He bought them, and told the clerk about the error once he had them in his hand.
That stopped the supply, and Robey’s 100 Inverted Jennys now constitute the world supply of this rare and much-loved stamp.
Their history has been documented in fine detail and a sale is always an event.
The last Jenny auction was held in November 2023, when $2 million secured a Jenny for 76-year-old Charles Hack.
That was a record for a single, US stamp, and it looks likely to fall this June to our first list entry.
Buy rare American stamps now
We love rare American stamps and you’ll find some in our stamp store.
If we ever find a new Z grill you’ll be the first to know.
