Art: Valuable Print

Many a great painting has sold for as much as $40,000 or more, but few engravings or prints have ever brought such a price. When really valuable prints are sold, the broker is usually a high-brow art dealer. But last week a print did bring $40,000, and the agent who made the fabulous sale was a cut-rate department store, Manhattan’s R. H. Macy & Co.

The print: the only known example of a one-penny postage stamp, black on magenta, printed by hand in 1856 by the stamp-starved inhabitants of British Guiana. Seller: the widow of Plush Manufacturer Arthur M. Hind of Utica, N. Y., whose husband, after World War I, is said to have bought it at auction in Paris for $32,500. Buyer: an anonymous private collector.