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It's a stamp. 

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I did have a couple of paragraphs
of lead up to that, but honestly,

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if you're just here to find out
what the most expensive object

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in the world by weight is,
it's this stamp.

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There's now going to be several diversions
about why it should count as that,

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what the alternatives might be,
and why it's that expensive.

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But if you just clicked the video 

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to find out the answer to the question
in the title, it's this stamp.

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$8.3 million for about 40 milligrams.

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- The stamp's called the
British Guiana one cent magenta.

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It's the absolute pinnacle of rarity
in stamp collecting.

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It's not a variant. 

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It's not a watermark variety.
It's not a printing error.

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It's a straight, normal postage stamp
of which only one survived, and that's

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what makes it unique. 

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So this was actually produced 

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at the local printer office,
so it was only ever intended

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to tide the colony over for a week or two.

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This one-cent stamp also, it's believed,
only paid a newspaper rate,

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which meant that they were used
just to post newspapers locally,

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and newspapers, even back then,
were immediately disposable.

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- There may be more expensive stuff
by weight.

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Antimatter is often called
the most expensive stuff in the world,

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but I don't think that should count here
for several reasons.

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First, there's no way for anyone,
no matter how wealthy they are,

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to buy a gram of antimatter
in the shops or at auction.

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Second, substances aren't objects.

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The English language has a distinction
between "count nouns" and "mass nouns".

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It's the difference between 

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"there was a dog on the road"
and "there was dog on the road".

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There's probably a less gruesome way
of explaining that, 

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but I guarantee that's
going to stay in more people's heads.

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And the third reason:
this stamp is non-fungible.

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Even if there was an antimatter shop
just down the road...

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okay, let's let's go for something
more realistic, but also very expensive.

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Let's say there's a shop
selling printer ink just down the road.

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One gram of printer ink
is the same as any other gram.

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They're fungible.
If you switch them out, it doesn't matter.

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This stamp is non-fungible,
not just because it's the only one left,

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but because of its history. 

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It's a unique object. 

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- The stamp was actually first discovered
in 1873 by a 12-year-old schoolboy.

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Now, at the time it would have been
nothing unusual, because over time,

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multiple stamps of
everything else were discovered.

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But this is the only stamp in
British Commonwealth history

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where no other examples
have ever turned up.

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It passed through an increasingly 

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prestigious list of the greatest names
in philatelic history.

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Stanley Gibbons is the world's oldest
stamp dealership.

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We have an auction house, two retail teams,
and a coin company called Baldwins.

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Stanley Gibbons was lucky enough to
purchase the stamp at auction in New York.

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And now it's on display 

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every Monday, Wednesday and Friday,
just for conservation and light reasons,

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but indefinitely here in an
oxygen-free conservation case.

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- This stamp has repeatedly set the record
for most expensive, and every time it does,

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it adds another line
to its already very long history.

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It's expensive because it's rare. 

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Yes, there is only one of these
in the world, 

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and the way our society works,
someone's got to own it.

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But outside stamp collector circles, not many
people would care about "the rarest stamp". 

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But to the wider world, it's famous
because it's expensive, and more fame

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will likely make it more expensive. 

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And I guess I'm helping that cycle
continue by making this video about it.

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I wouldn't claim to know
the company's motivations,

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but I'd suspect that it's on display
to the public here,

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at least in part, because the company
is selling shares in it 

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and more fame will help it
keep or raise its value.

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This is not an endorsement, by the way.
I approached them about filming.

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They've not paid me. 

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I have no desire to buy
or sell a share in a stamp.

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But if you want to challenge this for "the
most expensive object in the world by weight",

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and take the very, very tiny crown,

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well, the first step would be finding
something even lighter than 40 milligrams,

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but just as historic
and just as non-fungible.

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Good luck.