In 1847, the Governor of the Mauritius Island, a British colony located in the Indian Ocean, ordered to issue the colony’s first postal stamps. A local watchmaker from the capital city of Port Louis was awarded a contract to produce two nominations: one penny and two pence. During the printing process, the watchmaker erroneously engraved the words “Post Office” instead of the correct words “Post Paid” on the stamps. By the time the error was discovered, over 200 copies of the Mauritius stamps had already been printed and sold.
According to philatelic experts, less than 30 individual copies of Post Office Mauritius have survived until today. They are valued at $600,000 or more depending on the condition of the particular stamp being sold. In 1993, a cover bearing two of these stamps was auctioned for a whopping $3.8 million, the highest price ever paid for any philatelic item
