The 1976 Roses 13p with value missing, the only example remaining in private hands, is now officially the most valuable GB stamp of Queen Elizabeth II's reign having sold for £50,000 at Grosvenor's 29/30 May 'Davenport' auction. The error, in pair with a normal, is one of only three recorded – the other two examples are in the Royal Philatelic Collection. The error has been off the market for over 20 years and was previously catalogued at £35,000.

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Spink are to auction a used example, one of only two recorded, of the 6d Technology stamp of 1966 missing red (the Minis). The stamp, with Harlow cancel and 25 OCT 1966 date, sold for CHF 5,400 at auction at Corinphila (Switzerland) in December 2007. Spink have placed a £6,500 to £7,500 estimate on the item at their 12 June 2008 sale.

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A total of 53 stamps, from a sheet of ½d Pitcairn Longboat definitives issued 5 August 1964, have been discovered missing blue. The error, which results in the loss of colour from three of the people on the boat, was discovered in early 2008 – an astonishing 44 years after issue. The error came from a batch of sequentially numbered sheets purchased on the Islands at the time of issue. It's the first new major error from the Pitcairn Islands in over 30 years and only the fifth missing colour error from the area ever recorded. The complete sheet, numbered 1204, was first offered on behalf of the finder by auctioneers Philangles in March 2008.

Other recorded missing colour errors from the Pitcairn Islands include:

– 1964 Red-Footed Booby 8d missing pale blue
– 1967 Pitcairn Longboat ½c/½d missing deep brown
– 1967 Red-Footed Booby 10c/8d missing pale blue
– 1969 Fletcher Christian’s Cave 15c missing gold

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Selected rarities from the Paul Wales multiple gold medal-winning exhibit of 1970 New Zealand Pictorials are to be offered at Grosvenor’s all world auction scheduled for 22 and 23 May 2008. Included are numerous unique sketches and hand-painted designs from Eileen Mayo, essays and proofs from Bradbury Wilkinson and Courvoisier, and a selection of spectacular and scarce errors from the period.

Highlights include:

– 4c Puriri Moth booklet pane with four colours inverted and one upright in relation to the way it appeared in the booklet. Currently valued at NZD $15,000 by Campbell Paterson

– 30c Mt Cook National Park imperforate block found being used by printers Bradbury Wilkinson as wrapping paper

– 50c Abel Tasman with dark green and black transposed. One of two used copies discovered in which the headland was printed after the foreground rather than the other way round

The complete exhibit comprising 106 pages can be viewed, courtesy of Paul Wales, by clicking on the image at the top left of this story.

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More than 40 years after being issued, details of a second sheet of the 1967 British Wild Flowers affected by the loss of reddish purple have surfaced. Contemporary reports indicate the missing reddish purple error occurred on a single sheet of the four 4d flower designs. This is readily confirmed by the existence of cylinder and traffic light blocks of eight affected by the error. A second traffic light block, purchased at the time of issue from a post office at Seaford in Sussex and unreported by the finder until now, confirms a second sheet must have been affected. The recently reported traffic light block of 15 comprises six stamps with the error (which occurs on the bottom right stamp in each block of four). It's unknown if any other examples from the second sheet survive.

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