Hawaiian Missionaries
Mail in Hawaii used to be carried by ships with no official postal system in place. However, by 1851, traffic in Hawaii was high enough that the government set up a postal office and established official postal rates.
On 1st October, 1851 The stamps went on sale in three denominations covering three rates: the 2-cent stamp was for newspapers going to the US, the 5-cent value was for regular mail to the US, and the 13-cent value was for mail to the US East Coast, combining the 5 cents of Hawaiian postage, a 2-cent ship fee, and 6 cents to cover the transcontinental US rate. These stamps are most often used by missionaries working there at the time.
The top line read “Hawaiian / Postage” for the 2- and 5-cent values, but “H.I. & U.S. / Postage” for the 13-cent value, reflecting its unusual role of paying two different countries’ postage. And design of these stamps was very simple, having a central numeral of the denomination framed by a standard ornament and the denomination repeated in words at the bottom.
Till now there are only 200 stamps of Hawaiian Missionaries have survived, including all values.
The 2-cent is the rarest of the Hawaiian Missionaries, with only 15 copies existing. In 1921 the 2 cent Missionary stamp was sold for US$15,000 and in 1963 the same stamp sold for US$41,000. And Present estimated value of these 2 cent Hawaiian Missionaries stamp is £450,000 for unused copy and £225,000 for used copy.
An interesting story about this stamp is: in 1892, one of its earlier owners, Gaston Leroux, was murdered for it by an envious fellow philatelist, Hector Giroux.
An envelope containing a 2 cent and 5 cent Hawaiian Missionary stamp (as well as two other 3 cent stamps) survived to this day and is known as the Dawson Cover, in the 1995 Siegel auction it realized a price of US$1.9 million, and was last sold publicly for $2.09 million, making it one of the highest-priced of all philatelic items.
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