Alexandria "Blue Boy" Postmaster's Provisional

Before the United States issued national stamps, some postmasters made their own. Daniel Bryan of Alexandria, Virginia, had his typeset, and six survive on buff paper. The Blue Boy is the unique copy on blue paper, still on the envelope of a secret letter James Wallace Hooff sent to his cousin Jannett Brown in November 1847, which ends with the instruction "Burn as Usual." She kept it instead. Her daughter found it among the family's old letters in 1907, and the family, then in meager circumstances, accepted a dealer's offer of $3,000. A unique printing, a hidden romance and a narrow escape from the fire make it the most human story in American philately.