00:00World Stamps
00:09The Benjamin Franklin Z. Grill
00:12The Benjamin Franklin Z. Grill, or simply Z. Grill, is a one-cent postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service in February 1868 depicting Benjamin Franklin.
00:23While stamps of this design were the common one-cent stamps of the 1860s, the Z. Grill is distinguished by having the so-called Z. variety of a grill pressed into the stamp, creating tiny indentations in the paper.
00:36Although the one-cent Z. Grill is generally cited as the rarest and most valuable of all U.S. postage stamps, the 15-cent Lincoln Z. Grill is just as rare, and the 10-cent Washington Z. Grill, scarcely less so.
00:50All three of these stamps were produced at the same time, along with more common Z. Grill versions of the contemporary 2-cent, 3-cent, 5-cent, and 12-cent stamps.
01:00The earliest known postmarks on Z. Grill stamps date from January 1868.
01:05There are currently only two known one-cent 1868 Z. Grills, both with cancellation marks.
01:11One is owned by the New York Public Library as part of the Benjamin Miller Collection.
01:15This leaves only a single 1-cent, 1868 Z. Grill in private hands.
01:20This 1868 1-cent Z. Grill stamp sold for $935,000 in 1998 to Mystic Stamp Company, a stamp dealer.
01:30Siegel Auctions auctioned the stamp as part of the Robert Zollner Collection.
01:34Later, in late October 2005, Sundman traded this Z. Grill to financier Bill Gross for a block of four inverted Jenny stamps, worth nearly $3 million.
01:44By completing this trade, Gross became the owner of the only complete collection of U.S. 19th century stamps.
01:51Benjamin Franklin is a prominent figure in American history, comparable to Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.
01:57And as such, he has been honored on U.S. postage stamps many times.
02:01The image of Franklin, the first Postmaster General of the United States, occurs on the face of U.S. postage more than any other notable American, save that of George Washington.
02:11Franklin appears on the first U.S. postage stamp, displayed above, issued in 1847.
02:17From 1908 through 1923, the U.S. Post Office issued a series of postage stamps commonly referred to as the Washington-Franklin Issues,
02:24where along with George Washington, Franklin was depicted many times over a 14-year period, the longest run of any one series in U.S. postal history.
02:34Along with the regular issue stamps, Franklin, however, only appears on a few commemorative stamps.
02:40Some of the finest portrayals of Franklin on record can be found on the engravings inscribed on the face of U.S. postage.
02:46World Stamps
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