Rare 1860s stamp of Barberton founder O.C. Barber to be sold at auction in New York

A rare stamp featuring a portrait of Barberton founder O.C. Barber will be sold at auction Thursday, Feb. 29 in New York City.

The 3-cent relic from the 1860s was created to pay taxes on matches manufactured by the Barber & Peckham Match Co. after the Civil War.

Siegel Auctions in Manhattan is handling the sale for a mysterious collector.

More than 1 million of the black 3-cent stamps were issued from December 1865 through June 1867, but only 44 are known to exist today. The long, narrow stamp was designed to wrap around a box of 300 matches, which required a 3-cent tax — one penny per 100 matches.

It belongs to a class of tax stamps known as “Match and Medicine” issues, which were designed for U.S. companies that sold matches and patent medicine products. The stamps were part of a federal tax bill that Congress passed in 1862 to pay for the war.

“The stamps that were custom engraved and printed for private companies, so they could show that taxes had been paid on their products, are really a unique form of Americana,” Siegel President Scott Trepel said in a prepared statement. “They hark back to the era of 19th century American invention and advertising.”

Barber’s portrait alternated with images of his father on the tax stamps.

George Barber started the match business in 1845 in Middlebury, a village later annexed to Akron in 1872. His salesman son Ohio Columbus Barber became factory manager at age 20. When his father began a two-year hiatus in 1866, O.C. entered a brief partnership with Thomas Peckham.

Father rejoined son in 1867 to form the Barber Match Co., which would combine with 11 other companies in 1881 to create the Diamond Match Co., a corporate giant that eventually controlled 85% of match production in the United States.

O.C. Barber, known as “America’s Match King,” founded Barberton in 1891.

Among other interests, the industrialist led Diamond Rubber Co., Stirling Boiler Co., American Strawboard Co., National Sewer Pipe Co. and First National Bank. He was the first president of the Akron Chamber of Commerce, now the Greater Akron Chamber, and provided the financial backing to establish what is now Summa Akron City Hospital.

He died in his Barberton mansion in 1920 at age 78.

The Barber & Peckham stamp to be sold at auction is part of the Dragonfly Collection of U.S. Revenue Stamps. “Dragonfly” is the nickname of an anonymous U.S. seller who also collects Tiffany Dragonfly glass.

The New York company declined to divulge the seller’s home state to further protect his identity. There was no explanation available of where he found the Summit County stamp or how long he has owned it.

The ornate design includes O.C. Barber’s portrait in three-quarter profile with eight labels bearing reverse curves, ribbonlike scrolls, scalloped circles, five-pointed stars, clover patterns and what the Boston Philatelic Society in 1899 called “florated and foliated ornamentation” and “a very fine and closely woven reticulated ground.”

In Thursday’s auction, Siegel lists the specimen as Lot 1094 in Sale 1311.

The catalog describes the condition: “Intense shade, few faults including small tear, light crease and small thin spots, someone has circled a single blue fiber on back but this is not known on experimental silk paper and we doubt one fiber would qualify. Fine appearance, only 44 are recorded in the Aldrich census.”

The stamp’s estimated value is $300, which Trepel called “shockingly undervalued as a very scarce collectible stamp.”

Who knows what might happen, though, if two Barberton collectors with deep pockets get into a bidding war?

The Dragonfly collection will be auctioned in two sessions at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Feb. 29. The Barber stamp is scheduled to go on the block in the afternoon.

Prospective buyers can register to bid at https://siegelauctions.com/auctions/sale/1311

Bidding will be conducted in person, online, absentee and by phone. For more information, call 212-753-6421, email stamps@siegelauctions.com or visit siegelauctions.com.

O.C. Barber is waiting. Let the bidding begin.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

More: Remember the aroma? Former Wonder Bread bakery demolished at University of Akron

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Rare stamp of Barberton founder O.C. Barber to be auctioned