A Georgia man’s collection of more than 10,000 Abraham Lincoln stamps has sold at auction in New York City for a total of nearly $2 million.

The collection was amassed by William Ainsworth, a retired executive from the consulting and accounting firm KPMG.

He inherited his father’s stamp collection more than 40 years ago. Until 1977, he paid it little mind, but a meeting with a former postmaster general changed his thinking.

“He put together what is probably the definitive collection of Lincoln’s image on U.S. postage stamps,” said Charles Shreve, president of Dallas-based Spink Shreves Galleries, which held the auction in New York City. “It’s comprehensive. It’s the best.”

Many individual items in the sale brought tens of thousands of dollars each, because of their scarcity and unsurpassed condition.

Dozens of 19th- and 20th-century American stamps showed Lincoln. Mr. Ainsworth collected them all, as well as Lincoln tax stamps, private issues, postal ephemera, and proofs and test printings of designs and colors that were not adopted.

Among the collection’s highlights was a proof of a block of eight mint-condition 90-cent stamps of Lincoln with his image accidentally printed upside-down. The block is one of only two known and sold for $149,600.

Source: NyTimes