A tiny 3-penny Christmas postage stamp from 1972 is about to become the star of an online auction on December 10, 2025. Collectors know it by a nickname that sounds more like a painting than a piece of paper: the “Faceless Angel.” Only around 24 examples of this rare stamp error are believed to survive, and one of them is now being offered in The Crown & Dragon Stamp Auction II run by JC Auctions in St Helier.
The original Royal Mail issue was an ordinary 3p Christmas stamp, printed in huge quantities for the 1972 holiday season. On the normal design, an angel in gold stands out thanks to an additional red-brown layer that gives the figure a face, hair, detailed wings, and a neatly printed lute. On the error, that red-brown layer never made it onto the sheet. The angel is still there, but stripped of its features—a ghostly outline floating in a field of gold. According to the Jersey Evening Post, correct versions of the mass-produced stamp are worth about £1. The error is estimated at roughly £550.
Visually, the difference is obvious even to someone who has never opened a stamp album. The normal Christmas stamp looks warm and busy; the error has an immediate “something is wrong here” effect, which is exactly what many error-stamp collectors look for. In philately, price is rarely about age alone. Stamp value climbs fastest when three things come together: a simple design that makes the mistake easy to see, a very small surviving population, and a clear story of how that production slip reached the public. The “Faceless Angel” checks all three boxes.
The same auction also includes another famous British error: the 1965 “Missing Post Office Tower” 3D stamp. The commemorative was issued for the opening of the London landmark, with the tower printed in gold. On one sheet of 120 stamps, the gold tower never appeared. As a result, the main attraction of the picture simply vanished. The Jersey Evening Post notes that only about 30 unused examples of this error are thought to exist today, and the auction estimate stands at around £1,750 for a single mint stamp.
For JC Auctions director Mike Hall, these lots are a chance to show non-specialists what can make a small piece of gummed paper so desirable. In his comments to the local press, he pointed out that Christmas errors rank among the most sought-after items in modern British stamp collecting and called the “Faceless Angel” one of the most desirable of them. The “Missing Post Office Tower” error, he added, is regarded as one of the most notorious modern British mistakes in the field, precisely because the absent tower is impossible to miss in the design (quotation details and estimates: Jersey Evening Post, 10 December 2025, same source as above).
Taken together, the two British errors give this sale a strong hook for both seasoned collectors and newcomers who simply enjoy a good story behind a rare stamp. One began life as a cheerful Christmas issue, the other as a proud piece of national architecture on a commemorative. In each case a single missing color turned a routine postage stamp into a miniature trophy. For anyone who still thinks stamp collecting is only about dusty albums and tiny print, the Crown & Dragon catalogue is a reminder that the right production slip can still light up an auction room—and push a three-penny Christmas postage stamp into the hundreds of pounds.
