Rare Audrey Hepburn stamp goes to auction

Berlin: A collector stands to make a tidy profit after discovering a rare stamp portraying movie star Audrey Hepburn smoking.

It is one of 30 proof copies that escaped destruction when an unknown Deutch Post employee pocketed them and used them to send letters postmarked from Berlin.

In 2001, the government printed 14 million Audrey Hepburn stamps as part of a series featuring movie stars including Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo.

The print run was destroyed after Hepburn's son, Sean Ferrer, objected to the cigarette holder dangling from the actress' mouth and refused to grant copyright.

A minimum bid of $41,959 has been set for the stamp—of which only five copies are known to exist—at its auction on Tuesday at Berlin's Kempinski Hotel Bristol.

"We can only guess that whoever took the Hepburn stamps from Deutsche Post didn't realise their value, thought they would save 55 cents and just used them on normal letters," said auctioneer Andreas Schlegel.