Panini stickers, Penny Black cancellations, and the £1 million collectibles of tomorrow

Issue No. 20

COLLECTING DAILY

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Good morning collectors. It's Saturday, May 2, 2026. We ask if art is immune to economics, look at the first postal cancellations, and the latest FIFA cards. For everything a collector needs to know

Breaking News

Andy Warhol's portrait of Bridgitte Bardot is expected to sell for as much as $18 million in New York this month, a relative bargain in this sale season. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.

Any thoughts of economic uncertainty are absent from the New York spring art sales where estimates suggest hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent.

At Sotheby's, high estimates of $35 million each for a William de Kooning and a Van Gogh are topped by a $100 million Rothko. At Christie's you can shop for a Brancusi sculpture with another reported $100 million top estimate. Roy Lichtenstein's Anxious Girl could make $60 million. "Estimate on request" is attached to several works, including another Rothko, a Jackson Pollock at Christie's and a Magritte at Bonhams. Will they go even higher than the published estimates?

Coincidence has brought together the sales of a large number of exceptional privately owned collections with once-in-a-lifetime buys on offer. The very best art can be a hedge against choppy economic waters, yet collectors at this level have wealth that untethers them from day-to-day economic concern. Similar record sales are already being trailed for June in London.

Heritage Auctions have Action Comics #1, in which Superman first appeared in 1938, and Batman's debut in Detective Comics #27 from May 1939 leading their May 7 – 9 comic books signature auction.

Both are storied and well documented items from a highly developed collecting sector. The Action #1 is one of five known conserved examples of just 86 surviving copies of the comic. It is the second best condition-rated example, and the 22nd best condition-rated copy of all. It stands under offer at $712,500.

The Batman debut has a bid of $1 million already received. Heritage say this is the sixth best condition-graded copy they have ever sold. There's a population of 87 certified copies, and the best condition example is valued at $3 million plus.

In January an Action Comics #1 (the "Nic Cage copy") set a new comic record with a $15 million sale. Detective Comics #27 has a record high of $1.8 million set in 2024. The victor here will be a battle of condition more than it is of character popularity.

In the Know

Selling This Week

> Keira Knightley's door: Next Thursday, a door opened by Keira Knightley to a love-struck Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually will be auctioned at Omega Auctions where it has a £5,000 top estimate.

> Pokémon: Next Friday Stanley Gibbons Baldwin's list a Pokémon 1st edition shadowless base set from 1999 with a £15,000 opening bid and £25,000 top estimate.

Sold Last Week

Super-rare astrolabe: A 17th century astrolabe from Lahore sold at Sotheby's on Wednesday for £2 million, going past its low estimate of £1.5 million.

> Boss signed: Bruce Springsteen did best against estimates at a Julien's signed vinyl sale this week. An autographed copy of Born to Run doubled its top predicted price to sell for $1,600.

Events & Exhibitions

> Hong Kong gardens: Blooming: The Art of Gardens in East and West is a huge collaborative art show with works from Beijing, Paris, Hong Kong and Chicago. At Hong Kong Museum of Art now.

> Largest show: Next weekend, Collecta-A-Con "the nation's largest trading card, anime and pop culture convention" is at Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland.

A-Z

Art: More works from the Joe Lewis collection will be sold by Sotheby's in June in what is expected to be the most valuable single-owner sale ever held in London, with a £150 million estimated return.

> Autographs: Just Collecting Auctions are seeking consignments for their June memorabilia and autograph sale. Send images and details to info@justcollecting.com. > Handbags: Sotheby's say the Kelly Doll Picto from Hermes, the most recent in the legendary Kelly series, is already selling on the secondary market for $50,000 to $70,000 for good, limited edition examples. > Music: Next Wednesday sales from DJ John Peel's record collection continue at Omega Auctions. An Orange Juice 7-inch is the highest valued item with an £800 top estimate. > Numismatics: Japan Mint is issuing just 40,000 ¥1,000 coins to commemorate the centenary of the accession of Emperor Hirohito and the start of the Shōwa era. You can apply for the coins, which are selling for $222 dollars apiece.

> Pokémon: Coming to future auctions are a set of Pokémon jackets being given to random coffee consumers in very limited numbers. To get your hands on one of the 15 coats you'll need to head to Japan and buy some Boss Coffee with your fingers crossed.

> Stamps: A US 24c green & violet from 1869 has sold for $47,500 at Siegel Auction Galleries in New York in part 1 of their sale of the Nick Kardasis Collection.

> Trading cards: $50,000 might just get you Manchester City striker Erling Haaland, in the shape of a 2019-20 Topps signed card that's listed at Goldin this month. The card's mint condition grading is key to its value. > Trading cards: Inflation and an increased tournament size mean Panini sticker collectors will need to pay £1,000 to complete their 2026 FIFA World Cup finals album, reports the Guardian newspaper. > Watches : A Rolex owned by rapper Drake and worn on the cover of his 2011 Take Care album is for sale at Wind Vintage. The GMT Master is listed at $500,000, probably five times its value with no celebrity link.

The Long ReadWant to find the priceless rarities of tomorrow? Top 10 tips: The £1m+ rare collectibles of tomorrow.

Whatnots

A Quick Dip Into…

> Going beyond the stamp

The Penny Black was hand-stamped into use from May 6, 1840 (or maybe May 1, or May 2). Most collections contain an example of the stamp, but its cancellations offer another angle on postal history's most important milestone.

The initial, standard cancellation is a red-ink Maltese cross stamp
Its quality and placing can affect the value of used Penny Black stamps
There are many non-standard and regional variants on the standard cancellation
The commonest variants are in ink colour. Post Offices mixed their own ink, creating a range of shades
Sometimes clerks stamped from the wrong ink pad or had to use an emergency replacement. Another rarity.
Postal authorities were concerned that cancellations didn't work. They trialled black ink cancellations from August 1840.
The black stamp and red ink cancellation formula was finally reversed in 1841 for the Penny Red. Some cross-over in ink use created more rare cancellations
The official Maltese Cross stamps were sometimes damaged or lost, creating distinctive stamps or locally made replacements that can be valuable.
The Wotton under Edge cancellation with its slashed hand stamp is highly sought after.
At least 20% of used Penny Blacks show evidence of an attempt to remove the cancellation, according to one survey.

Cancellations are a wonderful reminder of the human element of postal reforms and a rewarding collecting specialism.

> Inside record art sales Academics compiled a list of 35 world record art sales from 1701 to 2013. We sample 10 entries here.

1701 Interior with Woman and Child by Gerrit Dou sold in Amsterdam for £320
1798 The Centurion by Rembrandt sold in London for £1,522
1852 Immaculate Conception by Murillo sold in Paris for £24,600
1919 Portrait of a Woman by Franz Hals sold in New York for £28,250
1926 Mrs Davies Davenport by George Romney sold in London for £60,900 (see image)
1957 Apples by Gauguin sold in Paris for £104,630
1970 Portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velázquez sold in London for £2,310,000
1987 Sunflowers by Van Gogh sold in London for £24,750,000
2004 Garcon a la pipe by Picasso sold in New York for £58,223,668
2013 Three Studies of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon sold in New York for £89,411,063

The current most valuable work of art at auction is Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which sold in New York for $450.3 million in 2017

> Quirky: Frank Hessy's music store in Liverpool has provided great provenance for valuable Beatles guitars, including one of the most important forged signatures in music history. When George Harrison finally got his hands on a Futurama (close enough to his dream Stratocasters for a skint Liverpool teen) he did it with the help of a hire purchase contract signed by a mysterious Mrs E Harrison. Probably his mother Louise. The instrument cost 55 guineas in 1959 and an unnamed buyer $1.3 million in 2024.

> Anniversary this week: On May 2, 1808 Madrid rose up in rebellion against occupation by Napoleon Bonaparte. On May 3, the French suppression of the rebellion included the public executions captured in Francisco Goya's masterpiece, The Third of May 1808, that is in the national collection of the Museo del Prado. Goya's reaction to what he saw during the Peninsular War included the Disasters of War prints; works so horrifying they weren't published until decades after the artist's death. First edition copies of the set now go for £150,000.

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.”

– Walter Benjamin, philosopher

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