Wellington, September 20, 2025 — A single 4d Lake Taupō inverted-centre error has set a New Zealand record for an individual stamp at a Mowbray Collectables (mowbrays.co.nz) sale in the capital, bringing a total just over NZ$260,000 (about US$150,000) with buyer’s premium. The hammer was NZ$225,000 against guidance of NZ$250,000. The buyer is understood to be a private collector based in the United States.
Collectors know the piece for its simple, startling mistake: the Lake Taupō vignette is printed upside down within the ornamental frame. The error sits within the early 1900s pictorial series and has long been treated as the country’s most coveted single stamp. Visibility is rare. The last widely reported transaction was in 1998, when New Zealand Post purchased the same example for NZ$125,000. The new price more than doubles that benchmark and gives the market its first fresh reference point for the item in over two decades.
Beyond the headline number, the stamp carries a clean thread of history. It travelled on cover from Picton in 1904, was noticed in London by the 1930s, and then spent long stretches out of public sight before returning to New Zealand ownership near the end of the twentieth century. That mix of a one-of-a-kind production error, a recognisable image, and a traceable chain of custody is exactly what seasoned buyers look for when they decide to stretch.
The auction room in Wellington drew solid interest across stamps, coins, medals, and banknotes, but the Lake Taupō lot was always the focal point. Pre-sale publicity described it as the rarest and best known New Zealand stamp, a view echoed for years in specialist circles. Even in a selective market, trophy-level pieces like this tend to find support because they solve a collector’s problem in one move: you either own the defining item or you do not.
For stamp sellers and valuers, the result resets the price conversation on New Zealand classics with dramatic visual appeal. For stamp collectors, it confirms that true scarcity paired with instant recognisability still brings decisive bids when the right material finally comes up.
